Loose Notes for Their Own Sake

Loose Notes For Their Own Sake

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Quotations re: Asian Calligraphy:
Quotations re: States of Consciousness
Quotations re: Writing Systems
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Wind speeds
Words - Elements

The Elian script, a conceptual calligraphy, works on two levels. Though both can be combined, one is visual, and the other intellectual.

On the visual level the details of the structure are outlined in brief and long form. What follows are a few notes intended to supplement the information found on the website.

The aesthetic potential of this script is similar to that of Asian writing systems such as Chinese and Japanese because the structure is essentially that of lines and dashes, with the visual and existential qualities that these elements imply. ((Supporting quotations) In addition and beyond what is possible with Asian systems, but perhaps more freely found in Middle Eastern scripts such as Arabic, is the option to move the baseline, from one, to as many levels are there are letters in a word.

The more letters there are in a word the more compositional variations are possible. Below is a limited example of compositional variations on the word “introspection”.

The above variations do not exhaust all the ones possible.

The degree of freedom involved in the ascending cycles of the sets of coordinates offers increasing creativity and choice. In the first cycle, other than the moving baselines, there is little configurational choice except for the angle between lines of a set of coordinates. In the second cycle there is a potential for expression due to the necessity for unequal line ratios; the decision is which line, or lines, of a set will be elongated. With the additional element of the dash and its placement in letters of the third cycle, there is a much fuller freedom in the design and composition of a word’s structural elements.

The number of variations for each letter are:

- 1st cycle letters:

1) angle between joining lines.
2) line size ratios in relation to other sets of line coordinates.

- 2nd cycle letters:

1) angle between joining lines (as above).
2) line size ratios in relation to other sets of line coordinates.
3) size ratio in relation to other sets of line coordinates.

- 3rd cycle letters:

1) angle between joining lines (as above).
2) line ratios in relation to each other.
3) dash location.
4) size ratio in relation to other sets of line coordinates.

- Floating variables:

1) Line lengths. Supposing the angles between line joints are maintained, that line ratios are maintained, still, line length variables can be added.
2) Orbits of dashes. Same supposition as above, with the addition of expanded radii.

In addition to the above variations for each letter, there are the compositional variations for the letters in use within words such that a word with repeated letters can exercise one set of variables for one of its occurences,then another set for another.

Number of variations for words:

1) Left to right movement.
2) Top to bottom movement.
3) Floating variables: Supposing the same left to right sequence is maintained, as well as the top to bottom one, the variables of line lengths, line ratios, dash placements, and angles can be altered.

Decipherement: Though nothing rules out that one can choose to fix all of the variables for the letters of a word into a repeatable configuration/composition, if one assumes that a writer wishes to explore the compositional variables, it is less likely that a word (unless it has only two or three letters ) will be written in the same way, i.e.: exact line lengths, line selection, dash placement, left to right & top to bottom composition, etc...- than that it will appear somehow differently each time that it is encountered. If the rules of the script are held in mind, (assuming that the writer followed them) and each set of coordinates is accurately perceived, then only one letter can possibly be represented by a given configuration. In deciphering words I’ve had the experience of first being able to recognize the beginning letters and then the final ones, followed by the “popping” out of the middle group of letters.

The perceptual dynamics of the Elian script are a combination of elements from both some Western and some Eastern writing systems - of left-brain associated qualities and right-brain associated ones, as it were.

The linear, additive properties of Latin letter based writing systems are maintained since the Elian script is a codification of an alphabetic system. They are combined with the creative and drawing based configurations of Eastern writing systems, such as Chinese and Arabic, in the practice of making letterforms consisting of variable line lengths and dashes.

As an intellectual tool, the Elian script is useful for contemplating words and their components outside of Latin-letter based systems. The line coordinates for each letter are then not a one-to-one codified correspondence between one symbol and another (the coordinates and the letters) but a place where all the known information about a letter is contained.

For example, the first coordinate in Box 1 is the place where one can gather perspective on the “a-ness” of the letter “a”; Box 2 in the first cycle is for the “b-ness” of the letter “b”, and so on. There is no end to the amount of information that can be contained there and each new practioner of the script can add their own data.

“We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” Edward Sapir, As quoted in I.J. Lee, The Language of Wisdom and Folly, p. 245, Harper & Bros., New York, 1949.

“...a language, any language, has at its bottom certain metaPhysics, which ascribe, consciously or unconsciously, some structure to the world.” Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 4th edition, Lakeville Connecticut; International Society for General Semantics, p. 89.

Each Latin letter used today has an individual history, both as to meaning and form. Knowledge of each letter’s legend in the course of time leads to an increasingly intimate knowledge of the letter’s being, beyond its ordinary use as a phonetic symbol. To say each letter’s “history” instead of “legend” would not do justice to the true flavor of a letter’s genesis and evolution. Anecdotal as well as empirical factors contributed to each letter’s construction and function. To rely therefore, solely on empirical information is to lose some of the letter’s unique conceptual flavor. The main thing is not to confuse objective with subjective data.

From the practice of this approach each letter takes on its own character, comprised of its verifiable history as well as the legends attached to it as in its esoteric context or in the morphemes that are contained within words such that a word refers, within itself, to the nature of the letters that form it, as in the word “c/on/di/it/ion”.

The breaking down of this or any word is meaningless without knowing anything about the evolution of the letters being referred to within the word itself, namely: the “c” that is “on” the “d”. However, with the knowledge that the letter “c” is esoterically linked to expression (the open circle leading to associations with the word emited from the mouth), that the “d” is the most solid letter of the alphabet, esoterically speaking, since it is linked with the number 4, hence the square, and is considered to be brut materialization par excellence. With a “c” on a “d”, “it” “ion” (the latter a positively or negatively charged particle), then the character, however whimsically interpreted, of the word “condition” takes on a fresh mien. “Condition” therefore refers to: expression atop a materialization taking on the status of a charged stated. This general description is very close in feeling to what a “condition” is, namely that which must be preceded by something which has been specified prior to another materialization taking place.

Another example of the use of the Elian script as an intellecutal tool is the contemplation of the different words for the same object throughout various languages, as well as etymologically within a certain language. This is done via contemplation of each letter comprising the spelling, of the word in different languages. For example: “table” (Tisch in German, table in French, mesa in Spanish, etc.) The different sound of each word pointing to the same object might well imply a different vibrational perception of that object and its role in a given culture.

The above indices are not intended to be an academic or scientific exercise but an open-spirited play with the form of the word when seen independently of its meaning.

One of the expressive aspects of the Elian script is that it has the potential for Western cultured people to use a writing system that has the same calligraphic (aesthetic) potential as do Asian and Middle Eastern calligraphies, all the while staying within a familiar cultural context, i.e. one whose writing system is alphabetically based.

Rather than take on an external culture, such as the Chinese one, in order to engage in a writing system that fosters an inherently expressive line, one can expand upon what is already a part of one’s “natural” cultural background. The nuances of text-meaning and aesthetic expression become that much more accessible. The basis for doing so is not as a reaction against anything Asian or Middle Eastern, but as something that can be done with a much shorter learning curve. The structure of the Elian script is very easy to learn, sometimes it takes only a few minutes to “get it”. What is challenging and requires time, as with any instrument capable of expressing subtle and sophisticated tonalities, is the practice of it, .

Quotations re: Asian Calligraphy:

“Line is the major component of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Lines define form, suggest space, connote surface, indicate movement. Even a dot may serve the same function as a line.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 62.

“In calligraphy it is obvious that the characters are all composed of dots and lines. Dots are not circular in shape as in the West, but vary by thickness, and their ‘tails’ indicate direction of movement in the structure of the character.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 63.

“In painting and calligraphy, most forms are composed of a combination of dots and lines.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 62.

“Chinese calligraphy is a rhythmic art. Unlike the Western word, which is a combination of many letters, a Chinese character is composed of lines and dots, with each combination occupying a unit of space on paper. This unit of form is an arrangement where all the parts, left, right, top, bottom, and the four corners, are perfectly balanced and echo each other - an architectural structure.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 58.

“The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is essentially the beauty of plastic movement, not of designed and motionless shape.” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p. viii.

“For in their written form Chinese characters not only serve the purpose of conveying thought but also in a peculiar visual way the beauty of the thought.” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p.1.

“Written words can be formed to liberate visual beauties; and this is possible with Chinese characters, in greater degree, it is safe to say, than with the script of any other language, because art, not science or religion, are the prime end of those responsible for their development. A good Chinese character is an artistic thought.” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p. 14.

“European words are sound symbols intended for pronunciation and containing no visual idea.” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p.14

“A simulation of life in the strokes and a dynamic equilibrium in the design.” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p. ix.

“In the West, calligraphy ‘ a beautiful hand’ (copperplate, like engravers use) was supposed to suppress eccentricities in style. The Chinese, on the other hand, attempt to bring words to life, to actually endow them with ‘character’. Styles of handwriting are highly individualistic and differ from person to person, rather like the present state of handwriting in the West.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 91.

“Calligraphy is a picture of the mind.” Chinese saying. Quoted in Sacred Calligraphy of the East, John Stevens, Shambala, Boston and Shaftesbury, 1988, p. 133

“Since the Zen calligrapher abandons himself in his calligraphy the content comes from within rather than without. Hence, each piece is unique, reflecting the ever-changing response of the calligrapher to his environment, his instruments of writing and his state of mind. On the highest levels the calligrapher moves in a world of pure form; the unity of calligrapher, brush, ink and paper destroys all relative dimensions. There is freedom -- detachment from rules, standards and conventions.” John Stevens; Sacred Calligraphy of the East, J Shambala, Boston and Shaftesbury, 1988, p. 147.

“Zen calligraphy is perfect simplicity. Whereas most of the other calligraphy presented in this book is based on complicated systems of imagery and have precise and well-rounded forms, Zen calligraphy conveys the same profound truths in clear, everyday terms unimpaired by theoretical reasoning or mysticism. It is informal, irregular, and plain, nothing more than black ink on white paper.” John Stevens; Sacred Calligraphy of the East, J Shambala, Boston and Shaftesbury, 1988, p. 147.

“The art of writing is traditionally regarded in China as one of the fine arts. It is placed on the same footing as music, poetry, and painting, sometimes even above them.” Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing; Translated by Jean-Marie Clarke and Michael Taylor, Rizzoli International, New York, 1990. p. 11.

“Chinese calligraphy is in essence an art of movement.” Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing; Translated by Jean-Marie Clarke and Michael Taylor, Rizzoli International, New York, 1990. p. 11.

“There are many elements to painting: line, wash, color, texture, etc. However, Chinese painting relies so heavily on line that most pictures might better be referred to as drawings.” Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing; Translated by Jean-Marie Clarke and Michael Taylor, Rizzoli International, New York, 1990.

“The tens of thousands of characters must, of necessity, be more visually complex than our twenty six alphabetic signs. Learning to paint and draw these characters develops all the skills required of a painter: hand-eye coordination, subtle use of ink and brush, etc.” Jean Francois Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing; Translated by Jean-Marie Clarke and Michael Taylor, Rizzoli International, New York, 1990..

“Each act of writing (Chinese) calligraphy is unique, and rests upon a concentration of energies set for a particular occasion which cannot be duplicated.”

“The art of calligraphy is unique among the arts of the world in that the process of creation in all its consecutive phases is visible in the object. A proper viewer [that is, a trained one] follows with his eyes the brush movements through each of the characters and the sequence of lines. He thus recreates for himself the moments of the actual creation.” Lothat Ledderose. Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy. Princeton University Press, 1979.

“Speech and writing are two organs of the same impulse -- the conveyance of thought: the one operating through hearing, the other through sight... ” Yee, Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy, Harvard University Press, 1973; p. 13.

“Art forms catch the viewer’s attention by their shape and structure, and they convey their messages by their posture as well as the movement they indicate.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 58.

“The famous critic Hsieh Ho of the Southern Ch’i period (479-501), in his celebrated work Six Methods, touched upon the art of line in his second canon - the ‘bone’ treatment of line -- and revealed the essence of Chinese art, the quality of line. Through many years of experimenting, I have come to accept the tenet that if a line is properly drawn, it will be a complete entity in itself, with a bone and nerve structure, with flesh and blood, hence endowed with a body and soul.” “In painting and calligraphy, most forms are composed of a combination of dots and lines.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 63.

“There is, indeed, a feeling of space aroused by parallel movements in the arts of music, dance, and calligraphy. The Ch’i expressed in calligraphy is an essential means of creating the atmosphere of space, for space is the stage upon which all action and movements take place.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 66.

“Among all the components of visual arts, such as painting and calligraphy, composition, which is the organization of all of the elements of painting into a cohesive design, is the most fundamental.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 69.

“Rhythmic vitality, in technique, is attained mainly by the continuous movement of the brushwork. The spiritual vigor of a composition is usually achieved through the completion of the work in ‘one breath’. When one starts to write or paint, he should keep going without any hesitation, for once the continuity is interrupted, the life force is broken.” Da-Wei, Kwo, Chinese Brushwork in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1981. P. 91.

“The Chinese attach great importance to their handwriting, not only because it once opened doors to higher positions in government by way of the Civil Service examinations, but also because it is believed that one’s hand reveals a great deal about one’s character. Graphology, the art of inferring character through handwriting, is an established practice in China.” Christopher Earnshaw; Sho, Japanese Calligraphy, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Tokyo, 1988, p. 3.

“When you look at a piece of calligraphy for instance, your eye follows the strokes, it knows when the brush was re-inked, when the brush pauses and when it leaps forward. By reliving that experience with your ‘mental brush’ you are in the mind of the person who did it - you have crossed time.” Andrew Pekarik, director of the Asia Society Galleries. (The Chinese Scholar’s Studio - Artistic life in the late Ming Period. 725 Park Avenue, New York 10021.)

“Writing in Chinese doesn’t have to be qualified as calligraphy, because writing is the art. There is no Western counterpart with Latin letters. In China, calligraphy is above painting as the highest art form. “ Last speaker at Symposium on Chinese Calligraphy. Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle, April 21, 2001.

1st speaker at Symposium on Chinese Calligraphy, Seattle Asian Art Museum,

April 21, 2001. From my notes:
“European writing is phonetic, Chinese characters are images embodied in thing and word. .... in writing, style is everything.”

“...Idea to precede the brush: ‘let his hand be moved by his heart’s desire’ is the basis of calligraphy as art.”

“the development of calligraphy as art came with the individuality of the styles, the collectibility of the works, the desire for them by consumers, talk/criticism about the works. (This came about with the cursive style).

“The quality of a calligraphy comes from the quality of the lines and the compositions that they form. By following their character, the character of the calligrapher is inferred. It is graphology in the pure sense of the word”. From my notes at the Symposium on Chinese Calligraphy, Seattle Art Museum, April 2001.

“For the ideogram is an inclusive gestalt, not an analytic dissociation of senses and functions like phonetic writing.” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, McGraw Hill, New York, 1964, p. 87.

Quotations re: Writing systems.

“Writing systems are systems in the precise dictionary meaning of the word: A set of assemblage of things connected, associated or interdependent, so as to form a complex unity. A writing system comprises a series of necessary components, subsystems, each designed to function as a self-contained unit within the overall system. These subsystems are: a finite symbol-set system, a prescribed script system, a limits system, a mensural system, a size system, a punctuation system, a comprehension system, an orthographic system, a format system, and a content system. Each subsystem must be designed to interact with every other subsystem to create this ‘complex unity’.” Rochelle I. S. Altman, Introduction - Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature; p. 1.

“The interconnectedness of a writing system means that when we examine a script system or a spelling system or a content system, we are creating boxes, separating the parts from the whole. Although it is much easier to examine the small pieces, we must remember to put the pieces back into their appropriate places or we lose three-quarters of the information. All parts of a writing system are constrained by political or religious affiliation; they were in antiquity, they still are today. Within any given writing system, be it Eastern or Western, Ancient or Modern, each component holds meaning beyond that of the written word.” Rochelle I. S. Altman, Introduction - Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature; p. 1

“The concept that scripts ‘develop’ is quite erroneous and stems from the conflation of a scribe with a calligrapher. Development implies that a letter change here, another there, until, finally, we have a new script. Scripts, however, are closed systems, carefully designed to work within the complex unity we call a writing system. Script families consist of a script, the class, and numerous mutations, of precisely four script classes. All uppercase serified fonts are descendants, mutations, of Roman Capitals and all lowercase serified fonts are mutations of North African half-uncials; all modern sans-serif uppercase fonts are mutations of Roman Rustic Capitals and all lowercase fonts are mutations of Roman half-uncials. There are only two script classes for Hebrew, Paleo-Hebraic and Square Aramaic: The fonts used in the documents, from, for instance, Gezer, are mutations of Paleo-Hebraic and the fonts used for the majority of the documents found in the Judean Desert and still used today are mutations of the Square Aramaic. Likewise, there are only two script classes for Greek, Attic Capitals and Constantine’s ethnic-blend “Uncial.” There are very few script classes in any writing system, no matter the language for which that script system is intended. ‘New’ script designs are extremely rare and occur under special -- and very predictable -- circumstances. There is no such thing as a “prototypic” script; there must be a script class for a font to mutate from.” Rochelle I. S. Altman, Introduction - Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature; p. 14

“The series began with the very basic point that a scribe is not a calligrapher. Although both the calligrapher and the scribe use the same basic tools of the trade, the training and requirements are very different and demand entirely different mental attitudes. Calligraphers are artists; scribes are rote learners. Calligraphers call attention to the writing; scribes call attention to the writer.” Rochelle I. S. Altman, Introduction - Some Aspects of Older Writing Systems: With Focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature; p. 1.

“Scribal training is purely rote learning; it requires acquired skill, not artistic capabilities. “
”Modern research into nerve-motor response patterns brought about by the space exploration program only verifies what the ancients already knew from empirical observation. In order to perform a physical action effortlessly, without thought, the nervous system must learn to respond automatically to that particular set of actions. Playing badminton will not help someone’s tennis game; the stored, patterned nerve responses are different. Riding a bicycle will not help someone drive a truck, nor will running a drill press help someone learn to use a hand drill. Each activity has its own stored patterns and must be acquired as a separate set of nerve-pattern responses. The acquisition of stored motor responses is the foundation of scribal training.” Rochelle I. S. Altman, Absent Voices: The Story of Writing Systems in the West. Chapter 11, forthcoming 2000.

“Because of changes in the language such as sound changes, the introduction of tones, and branching into new languages, the phonetic part of many modern characters no longer provide any clue on how to pronounce the characters. Therefore learning Chinese becomes a matter of memorizing forms with only an occasional help. It is because of this that the Chinese writing system is misleadingly labeled “ideographic”, because, as many would argue, every sign stands for an idea. This is untrue and pretty absurd, as a writing system records a language, not replicates ideas, emotions, or other mental states. In essence, Chinese is “logo graphic”, that is, its symbols write out words.” Internet website. Ancient Scripts of the World: The Chinese Writing System. Page 3 of 3.

“Latin letters not only show/demonstrate how linearity imposes conformity, but also the style of that conformity. Retired airline pilot having breakfast in a Sedro-Woolley, Washington coffee shop.

“As a rule it is found that the advance from one stage in the development of writing to the next is only attained by the transmission of a graphic system from one nation to another.” History of the Alphabet, Isaac (?) Taylor. p.39

“The chief lesson to be learned in the universal prevalence of the law of Evolution. In dealing with the history of writing we are met by the same phenomenon which is so conspicuous in the history of language, namely the fact that, there is no such thing as arbitrary invention. The written symbols of speech are subject to the laws of evolution as absolutely as plants or animals, or the spoken word of speech.” History of the Alphabet, Isaac (?) Taylor, p. 54

“Establishing the literal truth of the assertion that the letters of the alphabet are older than the pyramids -- older probably than any other existing monument of human civilization, with the possible exception of the signs of the zodiac. Easy as it seems to ourselves, who are familiar with it, the notion of consonant; a sound which cannot be sounded except in conjunction with some other sound, different from itself, is by no means as simple as it may appear. it involves the decomposition of the syllable into its ultimate phonetic elements -- the mental isolation, for instance, of the unpronounceable sound “t”, which is common to the articulations tea, tie, toe, and two, and yet is not identical with any of them. ” History of the Alphabet, Isaac (?) Taylor, p. 62

“The use to which lettering is to be put and the instruments used in the production of letters (in simplest form, utility and materials) -- have influenced almost to the exclusion of all others the development of letter character.” Oscar Ogg, The 26 Letters, N.Y. Thomas Crowell (1964?), p. 17

“The unique features of the writing (lettering) are established then, by the method of working in a particular medium.” Oscar Ogg, The 26 Letters, N.Y. Thomas Crowell (1964?), p. 18

“In like manner, an inscription chiseled in stone for a public building in New York and a missal written on vellum for the pastor of a Roman Catholic Church in New Mexico are both lettering, but to be fine lettering each must contain inherent in its design, characteristics fitting to the materials used, the office of the finished work, and the methods followed in execution. If we can keep these three tests active in our minds, the greatest sin of all, poor taste, may well be avoided.” Oscar Ogg, The 26 Letters, N.Y. Thomas Crowell (1964?), p. 23

“In the beginning, of course, writing was entirely independent of speaking. The growth from this to the alphabet is divided into the following manner: Mnemonic, or memory aiding. A tangible object is used for a message or a recording. Pictorial, or the stage in which the picture of an object tells its own story. Ideographic, or the interval in which the picture is a symbol for an idea. It is characterized by the fact that the picture does not represent, but rather suggests. The emblems have ceased to be pictorial and have become purely symbolic. Phonetic, or the system in which the symbol becomes the representation of sound. The phonogram is verbal, representing a word, syllabic, representing a syllable, or alphabetic, representing a letter.” Oscar Ogg, The 26 Letters, N.Y. Thomas Crowell (1964?), p. 52

Quotations re: States of consciousness.

“What the Chinese painter paints is not a scene, but a state of awareness; not a sudden confrontation but an accumulation of experience, touched off perhaps by a moment’s exultation with the beauty of nature.” Michael Sullivan, An Introduction to Chinese Art; University of California Press, 1961.

“Certainly the lineal structuring of rational life by phonetic literacy has involved in an interlocking set of consistencies . . . Perhaps there are better approaches along quite different lines; for example, consciousness is regarded as the mark of a rational being, yet there is nothing lineal or sequential about the total field of awareness that exists in any moment of consciousness. Consciousness is not a verbal process. Yet during all our centuries of phonetic literacy we have favored the chain of inference as the mark of logic and reason. Chinese writing, in contrast, invests each ideogram with a total intuition of being and reason that allows only a small role to visual sequence as a mark of mental effort and organization...It was David Hume who, in the eighteenth century, demonstrated that there is no causality indicated in any sequence, natural or logical. The sequential is merely additive, not causative. Neither Hume nor Kant, however, detected the hidden cause of our Western bias toward sequence as “logic” in the all pervasive technology of the alphabet. Today in the electric age we feel as free to invent nonlinear logics as we do to make non-Euclidian geometries.” “Only alphabetic cultures have ever mastered connected lineal sequences as pervasive forms of psychic and social organization. The breaking up of every kind of experience into uniform units in order to produce faster action and change of form (applied knowledge) has been the secret of Western power over man and nature alike. That is the reason why our Western industrial programs have quite involuntarily been so militant, and our military programs have been so industrial. Both are shaped by the alphabet in their technique of transformation and control by making all situations uniform and continuous. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, McGraw Hill N.Y. 1964, p. 87-88.

“For some years I have been investigating altered states of consciousness, and a major result of this has been to raise some questions about our ordinary or so-called “normal” state of consciousness (SoC) that are not usually asked. The result has been the development of a theory or systems approach for understanding the nature of both our ordinary SoC and altered states of consciousness (ASCs), which has been presented in detail elsewhere (Tart, 1975). I shall briefly outline some aspects of the systems approach as background for our consideration of sexuality and drugs.”

”Our ordinary state of consciousness is not something “natural”, or given, as we tend to assume, but a highly complex construction, a specialized tool for coping with our environment and the people in it, a reflection of the consensus reality of the society we live in. In our development from infancy, some of the potentials we were born with as human beings were encouraged and developed by our society, others were actively inhibited, others were not developed through ignorance of them. The ordinary SoC we finally arrive at and spend most of our life in is a tool for coping with a particular consensus reality. It gives us tremendous advantages, so we are the beneficiaries of our society’s knowledge and experience, but it also severely limits us when it comes to dealing with aspects of reality that our culture is not familiar with. if the consensus reality in which we live is functioning smoothly and providing a high ratio of positive to negative experiences, it does not occur to us to question the nature of our own consciousness, for this tool adapts us well to the environment. If we are not getting along well in the environment, as always happens to some people and is currently happening to many in this period of rapid social change, some of us may then either question the social system and rebel against it, or we may ask questions about the functioning and limitations of our own consciousness. We shall focus on the latter aspect: many people find that the ratio of positive to negative experiences in their ordinary SoC is not high enough and seek means of altering their consciousness to find more happiness, such as engaging in sexual behavior, using drugs, or other things.” Charles T. Tart, Sex, Drugs, and Altered States of Consciousness. After 1975. Obtained on the Internet.

“In any moment of decision, one can choose a state of attention that perceives the direction of what is naturally happening -- what life is trying to accomplish. In this state, we do not try to control an outcome. Rather, we can be open to any possibility. We can move with whatever presents itself as intuitively appropriate.” “Because willingness requires getting fears and motives out of the way, it is a state more easily described than achieved.”

“We can feel whole, because instead of being a battleground for sub personalities, we choose a single direction.” I Want One Thing”. Francis Horn.

Notes of a general nature.

1) In its inner practice, the Elian script removes meaning from a word and replaces it with perception of the form of the word. It is perceivable that the form of the word also represents the being of the object so designated by the word even though that being in reality ( the root of which is res: L. thing,) as an object separate from the viewer cannot ever fully be objectively defined, but only described. Further, the description cannot be all inclusive and is subject to amendments over time as information about the object alters with validations of new information and invalidations of old ones.

2) The establishment of the dictionary, although it is not intended to dictate the spelling or meaning of a word but rather to record it, nonetheless becomes a reference point for those wishing to ensure the so-called “correct” spelling and usage of a word. Certainly, a person might wish to avoid ambiguity of meaning in conforming to a spelling sequence, however, it is the desire to spell correctly that is also a part of a desire to appear “well educated”, and all that that implies.

This search for correctness, not to say conformity, expresses a desire or sense of an imperative need to belong to the dominant societal group, as much as it is an independent search for a “correct” spelling. There is no criminal law to spell correctly, since there is nothing but predominance of usage to establish the spelling of a word, but certain cultures (L’Académie Francaise, for example) establish authorities that dictate proper written and spoken speech.

3) Consciousness contains both the perceived and the perceiver.

4) Life occurs in a variety of forms and is perceived with various degrees of sensitivity. It is the degree of sensitivity (neurological engagement) which influences the definition of the perceived object and its meaning. Once can say that perception occurs at levels much in the same way that an electron is found at one energy shell or another.

Analogously, it takes more energy to be at higher levels. It is consistent with (physical form) that any structure at which the higher one is, the more perspective there is. Unlike electrons that may gain or give only a certain quantity of energy, a human consciousness gains not only a quantitative increase or decrease, but a qualitative one as well.

It is evident that moods and attitudes affect perception even though independently of the slant of the perceiver there is a separate object that is being perceived - with which the perceiver engages to a greater or lesser degree of reality. The object’s being as a statement of existence is ongoing, for it has been named as existing and therefore subject to perception, but its meaning is variable according to the context within which the object finds itself, and who perceives it.

5) Words have a being and an effect. As one thinks via words, so is one’s nervous system influenced to feel the supposed reality indicated by the words of thought.

6) Letters have life in them, in that they have a birth, growth, change, character, purpose, effect, and even a death. They each have a specific personality of their own, different from all other letters.

7) Keeping in mind the attributes of letters as individuals, and in combination with each other as words, leads to a following of feeling - similarly to running one’s hands along a shape or surface (texture) which leads to a kind of form, corresponding to the additive effect of their separate parts. The word character is then felt as a series of movements. An internal following-along in the darkness of the surface, scope and texture of the word.

8) The Elian script in its intellectual function of word contemplation considers that anything in material form represents or contains through all elements of that form, its genesis, as well as the existential quality of the consciousness that created it.

It enhances the development of sensitization towards “feeling” as an action directed consciously outwards. As opposed to ‘having feelings’ the result of being acted upon by internal or external events.

9) There is no need to believe that the information on the history of letters and their forms is true, only to acknowledge that it has been said about it within a certain context. To have to believe one thing or another is to invite repudiation. To recognize, on the other hand, that something has been said, is to perceive the fact of an event in relation to an object/subject without having to determine the truth of the statement about it.

10) The fact that the same visualizable object is called (spelled) differently throughout individual cultures indicates that there is no definitive name for anything; only the thing itself and how it is perceived - that the thing exists is itself metaphysically arguable.

11) Line forms are presentations of a point in motion that leaves a trace of its journey. The gestalt of the trace expresses the quality of that point’s movement as formed by the writer.

12) Forms have abstract mathematical (topological) properties, regardless of their (the forms’) named identity as a totality.

13) The Elian script places one’s consciousness at the level of free-floating elements (letters, word elements, etymology, etc.) prior to their bonding into a definite object.

14) Within the perception of any given set is an underlying assumption as to the objective reality of the components of the set. For example, a bricklayer assumes the bricks to be real, and therefore can count them into a structure. A set of abstracts, though, such as justice, value, or love, does not have such discrete components and must find a root of concrete elements from which to build itself up to attain an objective identity.

15) It is significant when a word’s spelling changes. If you ascribe to the perception that each letter (sound, vibration) has its own specific character, when a letter is added or dropped from the spelling of a word it would indicate then that a certain conceived attribute, a certain quality, has been either added or discarded from the meaning of the word, and by implication, the function, in context, of the thing represented by the word. Consider that the name of an object, its spelling and sound, throughout different languages is expressive of how that object is conceptualized by that culture.

The object, if it is physical, can ultimately be reduced to a technological description of chemical structure and properties, upon which all can agree, but that object will still occupy a variable name and function in its cultural existence. An object’s scientific aspect is also subject to change depending upon the sense (instrument, whether organic or technological) used to measure the object.

16). When Latin letters of a certain typography are designed they are constrained in having all of the letters in the alphabet conform in proportion to each other. In the Elian script this is not a requirement. As long as the letter coordinates harmonize, it is not a deviance from the writing system for them to have varying body sizes and/or proportions.

17) Left-brain-associated intellectual skills measure and determine function, that being a measurable, analyzable gestalt. However, art is a right brain-associated intellectual skills experience. It cannot measure, per se, although it can evaluate. Much less can the right-brain associated abilities verbalize except in overarching qualitative terms such as “good”, “great”, “brilliant” “bad”. It is the analytical left brain-associated demonstrators within the art field who evaluate, determine, as a matter of their function, how much “art” there is in a given object. Art is, in my view, in everything. The pertinent question is not “is it art?” but “what quality of art is it?”.

Writing is a left brain-associated activity in most Western cultures; it is analytical and measured. For such Western cultures to consider writing as an art, writing must seem to lose its function.

However, even to these Westerners, Asian and Middle Eastern calligraphies are seen as art because not only can they not,usally, decipher them, therefore offering no immediate function, but the structural components of those calligraphies are configurations of lines and dashes lending themselves to be seen as drawings available for ineffable contemplation - as one would an art object. This is also true for the contemplation of archaic forms of Western writing systems such as illuminated manuscripts, ancient Roman and Greek inscriptions, etc.

The other class of viewers of writing are those who look at the art of the letter forms, such as calligraphers and typographers. Calligraphers know that calligraphy is an art form because they see in detail, and in contemplation, the individual parts that are meaningful until configured into a whole. At that point of wholeness however, the function of the letter forms comes into play in the decipherment of the word(s).

Because Western writing systems that use the Latin alphabet demand that within a word each letter conform in style and size to the next, any writing that makes use of spontaneous formation is seen as doing something extra and beyond the function of the writing system itself - that is, to communicate.

18) Meaning is not inherent, but imposed upon what is.

19) Each quality has an inevitable nature and a recipe.

20) Numbers are quantities of points. Forms are relationships of points.

21) A spiritual life, is ultimately life at its most practical

22) Fairness. The concept of fairness as a recourse towards natural aesthetics. (fair, adj. hence adv: ME fair, earlier fayer, earliest faiger: OE faeger, faegr: akin to OHG and OS fagar, Go fagrs, ON fagr, fit, hence pleasing to the eye, beautiful, and further off, Skt pajras in good condition, fit, strong: IE r *pak-, firmly placed, firm. Partridge’s Origins.

23) To care for oneself is a major source of security. Without the inner resources to deal with the impact that an event has upon one’s being, one must look outside of the self for the needed materials, reflection, etc. which will provide the securing element. The conceptual foundation of security originates from a self-concept containing the maximum range of creative ability.

This will assure the providence of what is needed out of one’s capacity and not from reliance on its external manifestation independent of one’s will and efforts. The foremost conceptual premise is the very fact of the realizatoin of one’s existence. Secondly, the humane design would further dictate that one has the means to deal with one’s creation. “Dealing” consists of extracting the best play out of the hand that one has dealt oneself, including the ability to change that hand.

Secure comes from L. securus "without care, safe, " from *se cura, from se "free from" + cura "care." However, in its purely formal construct the se is associated with the self-reflexive prefix and the word cure is related to healing.

Even though this is not an etymological thread, it is a freely associated neurological one. The latter will have a more immediate effect, constructed as it is of more common currency than is etymological knowledge.

24) Each experience contains within itself universal elementary principles of forces, in varying degrees of proportions.

25) Know the elements and their dynamics and with the appropriate distance you will come to see which pattern is at play.

26) To experience a sense of concrete reality through time there needs to be a series of related changes of form that must seem causal and effected by each other. As long as one wishes to experience this, one must undergo the laws at that level. There is however, a critical point at which one can seemingly violate those laws and create a being anew whose existence is outside of the violated laws. It is not even that the laws are violated so much as they no longer apply.

27) Interaction through knowing the nature of the sub/stance. To have a clear idea of the chemical dynamics of an object is to create perception from a point of fact -- that point is the instance of actual contact between the physical objects at play.

To follow the physical states as they effect and change each other is to be present with the current state of being of a given thing.

The alternative, in the absence of descriptive knowledge is the projection of imaginings whereby one attributes to the possible cause/effects an image of either one’s fears or ones hopes.

The link between each micro cosmic state of change and a possible outcome is filled in with vague movements of “something happening” without knowing exactly what.

The outcome in such a situation is anyone’s given. Without a clear step by step changing and predictable structure there is an assumption that the possibility will obviously reflect the innate sense that life reflects expressions of a will seeking to achieve balance. What are the elements that are being balanced, however, is variable.

28) The acknowledgment of the indescribable aspect of the fact of language is that part which, in its recognition, contains the quality of experiential relationship between the potentially known and the possibly unknowable.

29) Some changes are imperceptible until a critical mass has been reached. To notice the previously imperceptible, leads to increasing preparation.

30) Nature, by its nature, is unavoidably accumulative/substractive to its smallest parts. The effect takes place, whether one notices it or not.

31) Within an infinite number of variables, the changing of one requires the supposition of an alternative reality containing only that one alteration. This is preferred to the desired change being contained within the same universe in violation of the laws of that reality.

32) People deposit in others that which they have in themselves.

33) If doctrines and rituals change (inevitably), what absolute enforcement do they have prior to the change?

34) The beauty of this is that first nothing but zero is created (the absolute existence of nothing). Then, the space containing that nothingness, is created within it, though it contains it. The next step is the nonexistence of space, i.e., the replacement of it, with matter.

35) The simplest transcendental experience is the knowledge (perhaps the faith) in each instant of consciousness, that it is there.

36) One form of perception entails a simplification of the experience of reality by experiencing the isness of the event (in element and in gestalt) without giving it meaning, and yet seeing in it all possible meanings in use or implied in the nature of the elements’ totality.

37) Destructive action is intended to remove a reality.

38) As the consciousness becomes more and more acute, the perception perceives events in slower motion form. The linear or additive interpretation (this and this and this and that...) is replaced by a gestalt actuality of all of the parts in their own totality, inseparably and simultaneously in relative action.

39) Different subject matters require a different reading rhythm in order to be understood. Fast material read slowly will be bulky, slow material read fast will seem complicated.

40) 1.1.1 2.4.16 3.9.81

A J S B K T C L U

4.16.64 5.25.125 6.36.216

D M V E N W F O X

7.49.343 8.64.512 9.81.729

G P Y H Q Z I R --

41) Form - the universal factor. All things have in common some ‘form’ or other.

42) Perception of words. A key to see words in their transcendental form is to remove the subjective “understanding” of their contextual meaning and to see them in their objectively material and intellectually descriptive form.

43) The sequence of letters that make up a word are informational as to the conceptual construct of that word’s ultimate objective materialization.

44) The spelling changes of a word through time indicate the conceptual and perceptual transformation of the subject/object described by a given word.

45) Vowel to consonant ratios in words in Latin alphabets-based languages parallel the feeling to thought ratios within the culture using a given alphabet.

46) There are no congruents in synonyms

47) The Elian script provides the potential to step out of a self-reflective system into one of simple form and structure that carries neither affective nor experiential meanings of a dynamic and structural nature. From such an objective point of experience, the subjective feeling through the conceptual constructs of a given word facilitates perception of its subject/object on a level, that by virtue of being feelings, is closer to the ineffable content of the word.

48) Spelling. The activation of a given level in sequence and relation to other levels in a continuum, including spaces in between groups of activated levels. BAT = A B C .... A B C... A....T.U

49) In the creation of a curved line versus a straight line there is the investment of feeling, versus that of thought. In making a straight line the attention is on how to keep a line from being other than straight. This is where rulers come in with a beginning point, a destination, and a process of complete control from the beginning to the end.

In a curved line, there is a sense of going with the flow of the movement. Though there is a destination and a beginning point, the process along the way is usually sensed (unless one is trying to do a ruled curve, as in the use of French curves, templates, etc.).

50) Numerous expressions of the need for a new language have been made. A language which would be capable of describing the intangible subject matters arising from the discoveries and expanding realizations of the scientific and humanistic fields. As it was expressed in the movie “My Dinner with André”, the new language would be one of the heart. I propose instead of a new language that one see anew the language that we already have. This new perception requires seeing words as forms, separate from their meanings, definitions, and to understand form as a separate language. A word is a sign, a symbol, a representation, as well as something in and of itself. Regardless of a word’s meaning, it is intended to point to something other than itself.

51) Culture. Each culture has forms and textures predominant to it, and which are repeated throughout its cultural elements: architecture, food, music, social relationships, clothing, political system.

52) Graphology. Though it is being applied strictly to handwriting, graphology is actually valid for the interpretation of form in general. In looking at a building in a Gothic style, and another in the Bauhaus style it is obvious that different considerations were instrumental in creating/preferring one style rather than another.

53) (Somewhat corrected version of text in “Book of Words”)... the very surface of the sphere of related elements in one’s experience. Which brings us back to a center, that of one’s being while being. Whatever the activity, words are the formative factors in the creation of its reality.

Language is a form and a function. A form because it is made up of categorizable elements; a function because it serves to realize (in the sense of things which by their existence imply a reality and vice versa) existence (realize -> res, L -> thing.) Language expresses every thing, from a concept to a measurable object. Form is a language that is point specific and function is the movement around that specific point. To see a language in a new way requires the contribution of the heart as equal partner with the crystalizing capabilities of the mind. In the perception of an element of language, the heart expands uni-spherically the contents of the mind. One’s presence at all of the expanded points creates a field of seemingly disparate subjects from which the pattern or distinguishing common elements are then extracted.

54) The Elian script is a set of tools with which to define the qualities being considered in the observation of language as form, and form as language. Form is a language received through the senses and its syntax is its purely formative aspects. One can say that all of those aspects themselves require a full language in order to be precisely described. That is just the point. Form and language, language and form, are interdependent, one needing the other in order to be. How then to reconcile that the exact same form will be called by a different sound in different languages. It is because, although its structural being is the same, its form will be perceived to have a different function and meaning within a given culture. Form is a universal factor. It it can be conceived of at all, even to say that it cannot be, it already has attained the status of a form.

55) Although one may force the form to manifest, still the value, the quality (beingness) which is sought after in a specific form (often corresponding to a conditioned or cultural image) is not necessarily innate to the chosen form, and therefore can bring no lasting value and satisfaction. Actual causal content may not be present regardless of the specified form. Seeing this, and letting go, allows the desire to be fulfilled and fully satisfied by bringing the genuine materialization which does in fact, in deed, contain the causal content sought after in the earlier image. The need for the true event of satisfaction is the cause of the desire in the first place in its infinite variations of form.

56) Numbers. Note that numbers do not have an upper case and a lower case. They are constant. In writing, the variance between the upper and the lower case could be said to be the difference between, in the former, the conceptual principle in pure theory of function and the lower being its form in actual practice.

57) A word has a life through time. Unlike letters it is subject to change, theoretically, indefinitely. The change is determined by usage which is an organic process. Who can control the unpretentious usage of a word. When a word fits what needs to be expressed there can be no denial that that is what one feels like saying.

58) Logical conclusion is no guarantee of accurate perception.

59) Imitative form initially gets a credit towards having the inherent qualities of the form which it imitates.

60) A line is the trace of a point moving through space. How that point moves, the trace that it makes, indicates the balance of forces between the inner conceptual construct of the mark maker and the external conceptual construct of the presumed reality within which the mark leaves its trace.

61) Letter forms are deliberate lines whose function is to depict known symbols that, through mental sound, recreate the discrete elements of language, the expression of which reiterate the fact of one’s world – which world further implies one’s existence and its properties.

62) English will also change in assimilating new words to express concepts and objects specific to those cultures whose language it has infiltrated, if only by way of the first generation of English speakers. Certain experiences particular to a culture’s history, climate, or social structure may only be able to be expressed in its native tongue. An Americanized or phonetic version of such words will therefore enter into the English language.

63) Language is so unquestionably interwoven into our conceptual and functional framework that few can ever step outside the oral and written system and reflect upon it without at the same time using it to do so. The very conceptual tools required to do this are themselves made of language.

64) Yet it is possible to view the elements of language the radical way (radix=root) by placing oneself at the coming into being of a word’s growth into reality, and accepting the inevitable outcome - given the fundamental elements at play and their nature. To stand under is to understand. It is a discreet mathematical process in that each influence, each cause towards transformation has a quantifiable effect. Whether it is physically quantifiable, emotionally, conceptually, or spiritually measurable is the critical point.

65) To see language anew requires an equivalent partnership between the mind and heart. The mind crystalizes feelings into definitions and the heart feels the texture of the defined forms. The heart triggers neurotransmissions which result in sensation. The favorable or unfavorable nature of a feeling determines the resultant degree of contraction or expansion*. The sensation occurs holistically at points linearly transmitted via neurons. One’s presence at all of the expanded points and their potential configurations creates a field of subjects from which the pattern or distinguishing elements can be perceived through conceptual filtering and reduction.

Feelings then lead to thoughts in continuous thought-feeling-thought-etc.. oscillation until thinking and feeling are either deliberately brought to rest, or achieve their still point. A still point can be a contemplation of the subject of the feelings, or the feeling associated with a set of thoughts. It is the continuous crystallization of materialization as to how it feels, what one thinks about it, etc. that is the flow of being.

* this process can be reversed by inducing inflation through breathing to change the content of thought into something increasingly favourable.

66) Observing-contemplating the natural structural elements of words and letters and the sequencing of letters into words provides one with a sense of that word’s texture and character. The information on the word-elements when descriptive is not intended to have meaning (“meaning” as a statistical averaging of values ) but it does have a certain feel to it. Since word elements (prefix, suffix, stem, etymology, legends) need to be conjoined in order to function as a word, they represent meaning in potential, but not yet made. The practice of putting spaces between word elements as in the word “condition = c/on/d/it/ion” is not supposed to mean anything. It just happens that if one puts those spaces in that word then it contains a sentence of sorts about its own components.

If one incorporates the legends about the individual letters into the understanding of the word-sentence “c/on/d/it/ion” then one may have a complete expression that can be said to have meaning about the isness (esse) of that word. In a strange way this space insertion practice with words can result in a realization of what a given word is about. The realization (from “res” L: thing) comes from the making into a “thing” of each word element and feeling the texture of the bonding of these various elements into a word that is then extended into its meaning.

The Elian script, in its intellectual application, can be an exercise to reveal how breaking down words is part of a process at the end of which you don’t say that you know more about a word’s meaning, but that you’ve experienced aspects of words and their letter forms. The study of pure forms themselves and structures is part of the flip side of the form of language turning into the language of form

67) If you accept that art is made up of elements that don’t have a function,then you can return to the “art” of a thing by looking at functional objects and reducing them to elements that have no meaning -- basically their conceptual and formal elements.

68) The word partially communicates that about which it speaks. People speaking different languages can all look at a table and know what they are looking at even if they don’t know how to call it so as to communicate it to another in the other’s language. The object is the original ideogram.

69) Word analysis. Analysis of a word and the understanding of the character of letters is not something that take place solely on a piece of paper -- it is a conceptual collectivity of awareness about those elements into which words and letters can be disassembled.

70) Word analysis. Its key is conceptual analysis so that a word never has a fixed meaning. It is attributed to have meaning and the meaning in any sense is taken to indicate the average experiential value that a word has for each individual as well as collectively. Ultimately the meaning is an individual experience. One can refer to a dictionary to see what it is "supposed" to mean. It follows then that words are a series of associations, and anything that triggers an association conveys meaning, although it isn’t always a word, it doesn’t always start as a word, or associate as a word.

71) The Elian script is an intellectual tool. As a a tool to analyze words, it is especially useful to compare words with a shared meaning element i.e,:”smart, clever, intelligent, brilliant, genius”.

The ultimate benefit, effect, usefulness, of which is full realization of the comparative nature of words - which one knows anyway, -- but the more you pay attention, the more you see, the faster one sees it, and the easier it is to pay attention. Ultimately language is pointing to a reality that is common structurally in its chemical reality, which is consistent.

The Elian script is to get a feeling of how that reality resonates in a given culture and it also ties in how it resonates in comparison with other cultures.

Miscellaneous Quotations and Definitions (alphabetical order):

Acting. See, you got too much into the character and got hurt. Arsenio Hall, 11/19/91. Late night talk show host.

Advertising. “Detachment and perspective are absolutely essential for pattern recognition.” S.S. p. 84.(Subliminal Suggestion?)

Advertising. “In a product ad, the dominant element is usually the picture, the visual element. In a service ad, the dominant element is usually the words, the verbal element.” Positioning, Al Ries and Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill, 1986.

Advertising. “Virility symbols overtly suggest one meaning, but also imply the opposite meaning at the unconscious level -- castration. This is a basic characteristic of symbols whether in word or picture form. For example, by saying someone ‘won’ a game, there is the outspoken implication of the opposite -- that someone else ‘lost’.” S.S. p. 124.(Subliminal Suggestion?)

Advertising. Relaxation enhances perception of subliminal material dramatically. S.S. p. __

Art for Art’s Sake.

“Closely connected with these relatively nonrepresentational approaches to art was the principle of “art for art’s sake,” which was derived from Kant’s view that art has its own reasons for being. The phrase was first used by the French philosopher Victor Cousin in 1818. This doctrine, sometimes called aestheticism, was espoused in England by the critic Walter Horatio Pater, by the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and by the expatriate American painter James Abbott McNeil Whistler. In France it was the credo of such symbolist poets as Charles Baudelaire. The “art for art’s sake” principle underlies most of avant-garde Western art of the 20th century.” “Aesthetics” Encarta Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1995, Microsoft Corporation. Contributed by Arthur C. Danto.(Subliminal Suggestion?)

Astronomy - “Nemesis” is the name of purported companion star to the Earth’s sun. Passes by Earth once every 28 million years. (Nature 308, pp 709-720).

Biology. “It is what neurochemists call an agonist, a molecule that, like a neurotransmitter, stimulates a receptor. The opposite of an agonist is an antagonist, which interferes with the receptor.” I.T.P.o.M?.

Biology - . Z-DNA spirals to the left rather than the right. Found in “enhanced” short sections of DNA that increase the activity of nearby genes. It also zigzags around the molecule in contrast to the smooth spiraling of regular DNA.

Biology. Radio waves and Microwaves. “The intense study of coherent microwave effects on biological tissue began in the early 1970s with the improvement of microwave lasers. The cardinal finding during those years was that laser microwaves at very low intensities (in the range of milliwatts per square centimeter), for periods of seconds to hours, could cause changes in the functioning of living organisms, such as increases in specific enzyme activity and increases in bacteria and yeast cell division rates. All these effects occurred with no measurable change in temperature, as the level of radiation was extremely low. Another intriguing finding was the existence of a threshold for each effect such that if the power of the input was below the threshold, there would be no measurable effect. As soon as the power reached the threshold, the effect occurred; raising the power further gave no increase in the effect. This “either/or” condition, together with the low total energy required, suggested that some sort of phase transition, rather than a more continuous quantitative change. In addition, in nearly every case of this type of finding, the effect occurred only if the input was of a very specific frequency, thus implying that there was some sort of resonant uptake of the wave. The idea of resonance implies that a specific geometry is involved in the uptake of the specific frequency and also that the geometry is somehow changed as a result of the uptake.” Fusion magazine, Sept. Oct. 1984, Geometry of Life, Ned Rosinsky, M.D., p. 40

Biology. Compounds known as TIQs are formed as byproducts of alcohol when it is broken down in the brain. TIQs bind to neuron receptors normally occupied by opioid peptides. When the brain sees receptors saturated by TIQs, it stops producing endorphins. It’s a Catch-22,(Blum said) the more heavy drinkers drink, the more they need to drink.

Biology. “While some of the arriving signals stimulate the neuron, others inhibit it. If the pluses exceed the minuses, the neurons fire . . . .A neuron can be thought of as a cell whose specialty is converting chemical signals to electrical signals, then back to chemical signals again.”

Biology. “With neural networks, he realized, what seems a problem of biology -- how the brain gives rise to thought -- is reduced to a problem of computation. The language of the brain could be thought of as vectors, rows of numbers like 5543722 representing the firing rate of a cluster of neurons. The other important parameters, the strength of each synapse.” I.T.P.o.M.

Biology. A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur after about 10 days without sleep; starvation takes a few weeks. (From my notes)

Biology. A person’s eyes are so sensitive, that, under ideal conditions, from a mountaintop at night they can detect a match flame 50 miles away.

Biology. After one minute of darkness, the eye’s sensitivity to light increases 10 times; after 20 minutes, it increases 6,000 times; after 40 minutes of complete darkness it reaches its limit of sensitivity to light, about 25,000 times more sensitive than before exposure to darkness.

Biology. Asexual reproduction reproduces by division; the new member is identical; is the faster method. Sexual reproduction reproduces by multiplication and creates new individuals.

Biology. ATPase (active transport) that acts as a carrier to transport sodium out of the cell, also transports potassium inward at the same time. 3 sodium ions out for 2 potassium ions in. There is always more transfer of positively charged ions outward than inward.

Biology. Each second some 100,000 different chemical reactions are occurring in the brain.

Biology. Electrical potentials exist across the membranes of essentially all cells of the body....nerve and muscle cells are “excitable” .... capable of self generation of electrochemical impulses at their membranes and in some instances utilization of these impulses to transmit signals along the membranes.

Biology. it takes 1/500 of a second for the brain to recognize an object after the light from that object first enters the eyes.

Biology. Only one percent of all the sensory data our five senses constantly receive is processed by the brain. The other 99 percent of the information is screened out.

Biology. Spectra. “The most powerful experimental tool in modern biology is the study of spectra, the patterns of absorption and emission of light and other frequencies of electromagnetic radiation by biological substances. It is by resonating that absorption and emission presumably occur; therefore, the spectrum is an indication of the specific frequencies at which a biological or other process is capable of resonating. These resonant frequencies, in turn, define the modes of work of which a process is capable. A ‘frequency’ is usually thought of as some sort of a back-and-forth oscillation motion, but in fact such motion is actually always rotational in character, and this rotational motion is potentially capable of doing work; that is, forcing useful transformations. It is these transformations or work functions that are the clues to biological processes and our ability to change these processes when they have harmful effects, such as the growth of cancerous tissue. Fusion magazine, Sept. Oct. 1984, p. 39, Ned Rosinsky, M.D.(The Geometry of Life).

Biology. The fastest nerve impulses travel from neuron to neuron in the brain at about 250 miles per hour.

Biology. Under resting conditions the membrane potential averages 90 mv, very near the -94 potassium nernst potential because in the resting state the membrane is very permeable to K and only slightly to Na. Yet when a nerve impulse is transmitted, the membrane, for a minute fraction of a second, becomes much more permeable to Na than K (for a split second the membrane potential rises to approximately +45 mv from -91 mv).

Buddhism: “Immature strategy is the cause of grief. “
“Until you realize the true Way whether in Buddhism or common sense, you may think that things are correct and in (true) order. However, if we look at things objectively from the viewpoint of the laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way. Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way. Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly, taking the Void as the Way, you will see the Way as Void. In the Void is virtue, and no evil. Wisdom has existence, principle has existence. The Way has existence, spirit is nothingness. “Shinmen Musashi, 1645, 5 Rings.

Chemistry. “ All salts ionize. T.E.o.C?.

Chemistry. “‘ion’ refers to any particle with an electric charge. An ionized particle is simply one that has lost its electrical neutrality.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “An acid by definition donates protons, a base must accept photons.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “Changes in matter are merely changes in ratios of qualities.” TEE. o. C.

Chemistry. “definition of acid to include any compound which will donate a proton to any other compound.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “For each reaction, there is a temperature below which it will not take place.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “It is entertaining to note that smell and taste, which are of prime importance in identifying properties in the laboratory, and which are always listed in the most severe catalogue of properties, cannot be reduced to numbers and thus cannot be categorized into a pattern.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “Metals will give up electrons, nonmetals will accept them.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “Term ‘weight’ is useless unless we specify where we are weighing an object.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. “Upon examination of the phenomenon of transfer of energy, we have to conclude that, no matter what kind of an energy we are talking about, it will be transferred from a system that has more to a system that has less.” T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. a collision between a particle and its antiparticle destroys both, creating energy. T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. Acids neutralize bases to form salts.

Chemistry. Acids. Strong acids dissociate protons readily; they react strongly. Weak acids give up their protons with difficulty; they react weakly.

Chemistry. Acids: 1) compound that has H replaceable by a metal. 2) substance dissociated in H₂O solutions, furnishing a hydrogen ion (H⁺). (Many compounds containing H are not acids.) 3) A substance which gives up protons (H⁺) to another substance. 4) Acids may be: molecules, positive ions, negative ions.

Chemistry. Atoms. The ratio of the sizes of atoms of 2 different elements sets limits on the possible configuration in which their atoms may be packed together.

Chemistry. Covalent bonds. Mutual sharing of orbital electrons.

Chemistry. Electron has approximately 1/1848 weight of proton.

Chemistry. Elements, inert. With all shells filled.

Chemistry. Elements, rare earth. With three unfilled shells.

Chemistry. Elements, simple. With only one shell unfilled.

Chemistry. Elements, transitional. With two unfilled shells.

Chemistry. Even the smallest bacterium that can be seen with an ordinary microscope contains 10¹² atoms, while a person contains about 10²⁸. This means that there are more atoms in each of us than there are stars in the whole universe.

Chemistry. Hydrogen can act as a metal or a nonmetal, i.e. it can form covalent bonds or electrovalent ones. T.E.o.C.

Chemistry. Ionic bonds. Involve the transfer of orbital electrons.

Chemistry. Metallic bonds. Atoms are closely packed and surrounded by freely mobile electrons.

Chemistry. Negative ions = anions.

Chemistry. Positive ions = cations.

Chemistry. Shells. Letters thereof. k (2), l (8), m (18), n (32), o, p, q.

Color. Faber Barren “dean of American color researchers.” Time Magazine, July 18, 1983, p. 62. “His studies also indicate that different colors appeal to specific types of people: red to the active, yellow to the high-minded, orange to the friendly, blue-green to the fastidious. Moreover, he says, there are cultural preferences. The introverted Nordic peoples favor cool greens and blues, while the extraverted Latins are drawn to warm reds and oranges.

Color. Psychology Today, April, 1986, “Crosstalk”. “In many part of the world, all the colors of the rainbow are described by just three or four words. But whether you are an Amazonian hunter-gatherer or an interior decorator from Manhattan, anthropologists report that each language adds new word for color in the same, predictable order./ Anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay began collecting and comparing color terms from different languages almost 20 years ago. Today, they have information from more than 70 languages spoken in a wide variety of cultures, ranging from remote South American villages to industrial European cities./ ...All this cultural diversity does not produce a multicolored Tower of Babel, but instead reveals a neat, orderly progression of color terms through seven distinct stages. These range from a reported two terms -- dark/cool and light/warm -- used by the Grand Valley Dani in Papua New Guinea, to as many as 11 distinct terms, used in languages such as modern English./ More surprising, the researchers say they can predict which color term a language will add next. Several African languages use only white, dark/cool and warm to describe colors, for example. ‘If a language has three terms and adds one, the fourth color will always be yellow or blue/green,’ Berlin says. ‘Apparently, you can’t just add purple if you have only three color terms.’ Purple comes only after this stage./ What accounts for this order among seeming chaos? Overall, ‘There seems to be a rough connection between social complexity and the number of terms used,’ Berlin says. ‘We can’t explain what the social conditions are that must exist before a language moves from one color stage to the next, other than noting that as societies become more complex, you need more words to describe things.”

Design. “Good design is the expression of forms of least effort.” Brillo.

Egyptology: “The creation of the world was pictured, by the Egyptians, in various ways; each city conceived it in its own way, but left, as is logical, the principal part to its local god. A ‘technical’ creator seems however to have been similar in all the theologies and the agent was the word. The initial god, to create, had only to speak; and the beings or things evoked came from his voice. The word is not in fact, in the Egyptian spirit, a simple social tool facilitating human relationships, it is the audible expression of the deepest essence of things; it remains what it was at the beginning of the world, a divine act which gave life to matter; in the articulation of the syllables resides the secret of the existence of things evoked: to pronounce a word, a name, is not only a technique creating in the mind of the hearer the picture which haunts that of the speaker, it is to act on the thing mentioned, it is to repeat the initial act of the creator.... When we read, in the funerary texts, that a deceased one wishes his name to be pronounced; when he begs that the formula of the offering be read in a loud voice; ‘a thousand breads, a thousand pitchers of beer....for so-and-so’ it is not a vain appeal; in the spirit of the Egyptians, the pious visitor who reads this formula will call up, by the sound of his voice, the actual existence of whatever he calls forth and the dead will benefit. One conceives the colossal power that a magic or a sacred text could contain, the means for unlimited action that it could offer its possessor; one understands how the Egyptians gave to their sacred old archives the name of baou-Re “omnipotence of Re’ for through these, they found the elemental force which, according to general tradition, the god Re had put into operation in the creation of the universe....”

“Many theological facts are explained as soon as one becomes aware of this particular perspective. For example, the permanence, during a good two thousand years, of an unvarying liturgical language, corresponding to Middle Egyptian, from which the popular language departed more and more. One could not alter the sounds and grammatical forms of a language divine in its origins. Is not the Egyptian name for hieroglyphics ‘divine words’?.... Never did the Egyptians consider the language -- that corresponding to the hieroglyphics -- as a social instrument; it always remained for them the sonorous echo of the basic energy which sustains the universe, a cosmic force. Thus the study of this language gave them an ‘explanation’ of the words.”

“This explanation is provided for them by a ‘game of words’. From the moment one considers words as intimately connected with the essence of beings or things that they define, similarities of terms are no longer accidental; they convey a relationship in nature, a subtle rapport that the wisdom of the priests would have to define: names of places, names of divinities, terms designating sacred objects, all become explicable through a phonetic etymology -- and the door is open to the most extravagant fantasies...”

“This process ...(Thus each city, each place-name, takes a definite role in the movement of the great god -- and receives an etymology that can make the hair of a linguist turn grey) may appear infantile and not very serious. It is logical nevertheless if we try to understand the value the Egyptians attach to the articulations of words: every external resemblance between two terms had to convey a direct relationship between the two elements evoked. Then it became general practice, used in every epoch, introduced in every area, becoming in the priestly science, the essential procedure for explaining proper names -- practically the definition itself of the nature of the gods....”

“Highest powers credited to the old magic books, faith in the creative quality of sounds, in the original divinity of language, explicative values of the ‘popular’ etymologies, these are three essential characteristics of Egyptian priestly thoughts, three screens through which all knowledge appeared to them. Let us add the knowledge of the hieroglyphics, with all f the evocative richness which their system implies, and we will have an adequate perception of the ‘intellectual climate’ in which, century after century, the ‘sacred wisdom’ was worked out.” p. 129

2. The Mysteries of the Hieroglyphics.

“Writing appeared in Egypt around the year 3000 BCE; the last hieroglyphic text that we have discovered is dated the 24th of August, 394 A.D. .... p. 132, 133, 134.... The (the priests) had some practically come to make them a mode of triple expression, able at will (and sometimes simultaneously) to serve as letters (phonetic elements constituting a word), to design scenes parallel to the idea expressed, doubling the auditory perception by visual awareness, and even to suggest in advance, beyond the word that it serves to spell, the adjectives and functions with which the word might ultimately be endowed.

Electricity.

Static = loss of electric charge.
Neutral - having the same number of protons and electrons.
Volt - A measure of the amount of work done in moving electrons between two points in an electric current.
Volts = amps x ohms.
Ampere = A measure of the # of electrons moving past a point in an electric circuit in one second.
Ohm = A measure of the amount of resistance in an electric circuit. 1 ohm allows 1 amp of current to flow at 1 volt.
Resistance = Name given to all conditions which limit the flow of electrons in an electric circuit.

“The Elian script”, is the current name of what was formerly only “conceptual calligraphy”. The genesis of it was a conversation with a recent acquaintance in Chicago, 2002, who suggested that “Celian” was a more logical term than “conceptual calligraphy”. My brother than said that there was a fuzzy aspect to using “Celian by C.C. Elian” and that the “Elian script” made more sense. I realized that there could, in any event, be more than one kind of conceptual calligraphy and that using “the Elian script, a conceptual calligraphy” clearly identified that the particular system in use was one that I had developed, rather than a claim to having developed the definitive conceptual calligraphy.

Geometry. Lines. Two different lines which are not parallel intersect at exactly one point.

Geometry. Plane. a surface of such a nature that a straight line forming two of its point lies wholly on the surface.

Gnostic Gospels. “... other gnostic sources offer more specific direction. The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth discloses and ‘order of tradition’ that guides the ascent to higher knowledge. ‘[O my father], yesterday you promised me [that you would bring] my mind into [the] eighth and afterwards you would bring me into the ninth. You said that this is the order of the tradition. ’80 His teacher assents: ‘O my son, indeed this is the order. But the promise was according to human nature.’ 81 He explains that the disciple himself must bring forth the understanding he seeks: ‘I set forth the action for you. But the understanding dwells in you.” . Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “...Bring in your guide and your teacher. The mind is the guide, but reason is the teacher.... Live according to your mind... Acquire strength, for the mind is strong... Enlighten your mind... Light the lamp within you...” “Knock on yourself as upon a door and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on the road, it is impossible for you to go astray... Open the door for yourself that you may know what it is.... Whatever you will open for yourself, you will open. Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “Finally, those gnostics who conceived of gnosis as a subjective, immediate experience, concerned themselves above all with the internal significance of events...” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “For this reason, this type of gnosticism shares with psychotherapy a fascination with the non literal significance of language, as both attempt to understand the internal quality of the experience. Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels. p. 160.

Gnostic Gospels. “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “Recognize what is before your eyes, and what is hidden will be revealed to you.” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “The Book of Thomas the Contender. ‘whoever has not known himself has known nothing, but he who knows himself has at the same time already achieved knowledge about the depths of all things.’ 70 ...’That whoever explores human experience simultaneously discovers divine reality -- Simon Magus, Hippolytus reports, claimed that each human being is a dwelling place, ‘and that in him dwells an infinite power -- the root of the universe’ But since that infinite power exists in two modes, one actual, the other potential, so this infinite power ‘exists in a latent condition in everyone,’ but ‘potentially, not actually.’ How is one to realize the potential? ... Discovering that for oneself is, apparently, the first step toward self-knowledge. Thus in the Gospel of Thomas, the disciple asks Jesus to tell them what to do: “... Jesus said, ‘Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate...” 78. Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “The Gospel of Truth also expresses this metaphor: each person must receive “his own name” -- not of course, one’s ordinary name, but one’s true identity. Those who are “the sons of interior knowledge: gain the power to speak their own names... Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. “Wisdom, youngest daughter of the primal Couple, was seized by a passion to know the Father which she interpreted as love. Her attempts to know him would have led her to self-destruction had she not encountered a power called The Limits, ‘a power which supports all things and preserves them.” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. Gospel of Thomas. “Jesus said, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over all things.” “The lamp of the body is the mind.” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. Gospel of Thomas. “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside, and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same. . . then you will enter [the Kingdom]. ”Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. The Gospel of Philip. “‘truth brought names into existence in the world because it is not possible to teach it without names.’ 65 “But truth must be clothed in symbols: ‘Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. One will not receive truth in any other way. ’66 ... For he explains, in ordinary speech, each word refers to a specific, external phenomenon, a person ‘sees the sun without being a sun, or he sees the sky and the earth and everything else, but he is not these things.’ 67 Religious language, on the other hand, is a language of internal transformation; whoever r perceives divine reality ‘becomes what he sees.’” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. The New Testament term for sin, hamartia, comes from the sport of archery; literally, it means “missing the mark”. New Testament sources teach that we suffer distress, mental and physical, because we fail to achieve the moral goal toward which we aim: “all gave sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” P. 149, Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Gnostic Gospels. The Testimony of Truth says that the gnostic becomes a “disciple of his [own] mind, discovering that his own mind is ‘the father of the truth’. He learns that he needs to know by himself in meditative silences. Consequently, he considers himself equal to every one, maintaining his own independence of any one else’s authority. And he is patient with everyone, he makes himself equal to every one, and he also separates himself from them.” Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels.

Graphological factors comprising personality.

GRAPHIC INDICATORS Arrangement of pattern	PERSONALITY FACTORS adaptation: outlook on the world
Rhythm and harmony	functional Integration
Style	mode of self-expression
Structure of writing line a) upper zone b) middle zone c) lower zone	personality structure a) intellectual & spiritual range b) ego function c) biological demands
Directional trend a) rightward b) leftward:	Orientation: outward, to future, extroversive inward, to past, introversive
Expansion a) vertical, height b) horizontal, width:	self-display , claim to status demand for elbow room
Slant: Feeling response a) rightward: b) upright: c) leftward:	compliant self-reliant defiant
Connective form:	Social behavior pattern
Connectedness	Associative processes, facility of expression
Speed:	Tempo of somatic and psychic functioning
Pressure:	Vital energy, libido
Tension:	Adjustment to strain and stress
Alignment:	Sense of economy, goal orientation
Regularity:	Emotional balance and control /TD>
Signature:	Self-image

Letters: Rate of occurrence. Random sampling of 3,500 anagrams. E (120) A (98) R (80) I (75) N (68) L (65) O (63) T (60) S (55) U (45) C (40) D (38) P (35) G (28) H (328) M (28) B (24) Y (20) F (17) K (15) V (12) W (11) J (4.5) X (3.5) Q (1).

Letter S. Factor “S”, enhances and prolongs sleep (dreamless).

Letter P. Substance “P”, neuropeptide involved in pain control.

Letter X. “Fragile X syndrome”. The disorder takes its name from an abnormality on the long arm of the X chromosome, which instead of being shaped like a long, thin, pole, looks more like an exclamation mark with the point barely attached. In some cases this ‘fragile’ narrowing breaks off the bottom of the chromosome.

Linguistics. “In the tenth century, Venetian noblemen began to adopt hereditary family names. This custom was to be followed by the Irish, English, and then the Germans and other Europeans.”

Linguistics: Vowel sounds = When air from the voice box moves without obstruction through the vocal cavities.

Linguistics: Consonant sounds = When the air from the voice box is briefly obstructed by striking the lips, teeth, tongue, or roof of the mouth.

Linguistics “The very act of denomination depends on a process of classification... they (the classifications) are based on certain constant and recurring elements in our sense experience... There is no rigid and pre-established scheme according to which our divisions and subdivisions might once and for all be made. Even in languages closely akin and agreeing in their general structure we do not find identical names. As Humboldt pointed out, the Greek and Latin terms for the moon, although they refer to the same object, do not express the same intention or concept. The Greek term (m`en) denotes the function of the moon to “measure” time; the Latin term (luna, luc-na) denotes the moon’s lucidity or brightness... The function of a name is always limited to emphasizing a particular aspect of a thing, and it is precisely this restriction and limitation upon which the value of the name depends... in the act of denomination we select, out of a multiplicity and diffusion in our sense data, certain fixed centers of perception.” Cassirer, E. An essay on man. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1944.

Linguistics: “If we were to go to a Trobriander to a garden where the taytu, a species of yam, has just been harvested, I would come back and tell you: ‘There are good taytu there; just the right degree of ripeness, large and perfectly shaped; not a blight to be seen, not one rotten spot; nicely rounded at the tips, with no spiky points; all first-run harvesting, no second gleanings.’ The Trobriander would come back and say “Taytu”; and he would have said all that I did and more. Even the phrase ‘There are taytu” would represent a tautology, since existence is implied in being, is, in fact an ingredient of being to the Trobriander. And all the attributes, even if he could find the words for them at hand in his own language, would have been tautological, since the concept of saying taytu contains them all. In fact, if one of these were absent, the object would not have been a taytu. If it is unripe it is a bwabawa; if overripe, spent, it is not a spent taytu but something else, a yowana. If it is blighted it is a nukunokuna. It it has a rotten patch, it is a taboula; if misshapen, it is an usasu; if perfect in shape but small, it is a yagogu. If the tuber, whatever its shape or condition, is a post-harvest gleaning, it is an ulumadala. When the spent tuber, the yowana, sends its shoots underground, as we put it, it is not a yowana with shoots, but a silisata. When new tubers have formed on these shoots, it is not a silisata but a gadena..... Lee, Dorothy. Being and value in a primitive culture. Journal of Philosophy, 1949, 13, 401-15

Mathematics: Divisible by 2 = ending in 0, 2, 4, 6, 8.
Divisible by 3 = digits adding up to 3 or 9.
Divisible by 4 = last 2 digits are 0s or form a # divisible by 4.
Divisible by 5 = ending in 0 or 5.
Divisible by 6 = divisible by 2 & 3 at same time.
Divisible by 8 = last 3 #s are 0s or form # divisible by 8.
Divisible by 9 = sum of digits divisible by 9.
Divisible by 10 = ends in 0.
Divisible by 11= Difference of the sum of the odd & even digits is 0 or divisible by 11.
Divisible by 12 = divisible by 3 & 4.
Divisible by 15 = divisible by 3 & 5.
Divisible by 22 = divisible by 2 & 11.
Divisible by 25 = ends in 00; 25; 50; 75.

+ . + = +
+ . - = -
+ / - = -
- / - = +

Mathematics: “The simplest way to think about a dimension is as a variable -- that is, as a quantity that can have any of a number of different values. It can represent latitude or longitude, time or speed, apples or oranges, particle or stars. You can describe a weather pattern by plugging in values for temperature, humidity, wind velocity, precipitation, and so on. If you need 12 variables to describe a situation, you have a 12-dimensional problem./ But variables alone don’t add up to geometry. As William Thurston, director of the Math Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, California, points out, ‘Having three variables is not the same as having three-dimensional space.’ And for understanding complex relationships, the shape of the space is often just as important as the number of dimensions it occupies. Take a standard two-dimensional relationship -- say, a graph relating interest to consumer spending. Neither has anything to do with geometry, but you can get a better grasp of the situation by looking at the shape of the line. You can easily see where it peaks or bottoms out. You can see the slope of the curve./ The same holds true in five- or even ten-dimensional models. ‘Logically, it may seem like the geometry is lost, that it’s just numbers,’ says Cappell. ‘But the geometry can tell you things that the numbers alone can’t; how a curve reaches a maximum, how you get from there to here.’ You can see hills and valleys, sharp turns and smooth transitions; holes in a doughnut-shaped nine-dimensional model might indicate realms where no solutions lie./ Forming pictures of these intricate objects is easiest if you think about adding one dimension at a time, each spreading into space in a different direction. Start with a point. Stretch the point out along one dimension and you get a line, bounded by two points. Pull out the line in a perpendicular direction, and you sweep out a square, an area bounded by four lines. To get a cube, blow up the square into the next dimension, and you get a solid figure bounded by six squares. To get a four-dimensional cube, or hyper cube, ; simply’ puff up the cube into yet another dimension: you’ll have an object whose borders are eight cubes. Similarly, you can rotate a two-dimensional disk around in a third dimension and get a sphere. You can swirl a sphere around in a fourth dimension and get a hyper sphere./....Bill Thurston is known among at least some of his colleagues as the world’s greatest living geometer .... believes that our difficulty with perceiving higher dimensions is primarily psychological, that tit ultimately has something to do with the division in the mind’s eye between linear, analytical thinking, and geometric visualization of shapes....’/ ‘When we talk about higher-dimensional spaces,’ Thurston says, ‘we’re learning to think in and plug into this other spatial processing system. The going back and forth is difficult because it involves two really foreign parts of the brain. We don’t have a good way of communicating this spatial information. The problem isn’t with the substance of the mathematics; it’s how to think about it.’” Escape from 3-D. K.C. Cole, Discover, July 1993. p. 54.

Mathematics. A 1° curve: straight line that can intercept another straight line only once. As in a “|” intercepting a “-”.

Mathematics. A 2° curve: can be intercepted by a straight line at only 2 points. As in “U” shape cut by a straight line.

Mathematics. A 3° curve: can be intercepted by a straight line at only 3 points.(as in a sideways “S” over a straight line)

Mathematics. A 4° curve: can be intercepted by a straight line at only 4 points. As in an infinity symbol cut in half by a straight line, or a “W” cut by a straight line, touching 4 points on the “W”.

Mathematics. e = 1+ sum of reciprocals of all the factorials = 1 + 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + ...1/n! = app.. 2.71828.

Mathematics. i = square root of -1.

Mathematics. in -4 and +4, the absolute value is 4.

Mathematics. Meter equals the distance light travels in 1/299,742,456ths of a second.

Mathematics. n! (called factorial n) = product of all integers up to and including n, n being any given integer. Example: 4! or factorial 4 = 1x2x3x4=24.

Mathematics. Numerical palindrome. One can be obtained by choosing any number, reversing it, adding, then reversing and adding again. Example: 3821+1283=5104+4015=9119

Mathematics. Proof by mathematical induction. Despite its name, this is a deductive method of proof, inductive methods being foreign to mathematics.

Mathematics. Sigma (S)= sum of all quantities of a given collection. Example 4 on top of S, with n=1 = 1+2+3+4=10.

Mathematics. Take any 3 digit number in descending order of digits, reverse it, subtract, reverse the result, add, and you invariably get 1089. Example: 862-268=574+495=1089, 941-149=792+297=1089

Mathematics. The most basic set of all is the empty set, the set with no members. This set is usually denoted by the symbol Ø (a Scandinavian, not a Greek letter). We will define zero to be this set. We now define the natural number one as the set with just the member Ø. We then define two as the set with just the member Ø and the with the set with the member Ø, three to be the set with just the member Ø, plus the set with Ø as its member, plus the set with both of these, and so on. 0=Ø, 1={Ø}, 2={Ø,{Ø}}, 3={Ø,{Ø},{Ø{Ø}}}, and so on. The natural numbers are thus definable, as it were, from nothing.

Medical: Alzheimer. “If you feel the window, you get the idea. Boy do I get it.” Alzheimer’s patient so-called nonsensical comments.

Medical:. Electric fields. “Bio-electric fields can be made visible because surrounding ionized gases take on their pattern in much the same way that iron fillings reveal the pattern of an electromagnetic field.” “Every living system is a composite of structure, energy and information. From the perspective of medicine, he continued, the most useful aspect is ‘bio-information’, the underlying energy relationships that pattern the system. Bio-information is affected long before the system begins to malfunction.” “Pathological symptoms begin at the level of information. Incoming information -- intellectual, chemical, electro-magnetic or any other outside influence -- must be interpreted, transformed, stored, or discharged in a manner that enables the system to stay in equilibrium with its environment.” “Severe or chronic disequilibrium between incoming information and the system’s own patter eventually shows up as disease or disorder.” “Electronography. Florin Dumitrescu, 71 bd Vauban, 59800 Lille, France . Brain-Mind bulletin 8/23/82.

Neurology. Dr. Jack Green, N.Y. Mt. Sinai, reports that chemical messengers identify themselves to receptor sites on nerve cells by using a language of electric force-fields.

Philosophy. Wittgenstein. Philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

Physics. “As long as you are moving along with the acceleration of gravity, the force seems to disappear -- just as the force of magnetism seems to disappear when you ‘travel along with’ an electron” K.C. Cole, Sympathetic Vibrations, p. 149.

Physics. “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not so nearly concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” Niels Bohrs

Physics. Alpha decay. A type of spontaneous nuclear transformation in which a nucleus breaks into two parts, one of which is a helium nucleus, or alpha particle. Several naturally occurring heavy nuclei are radioactive through alpha decay, which led to the original discovery of radioactivity.

Physics. Antiparticles. Two types of particles with equal mass and spin but opposite electronic charge, baryon number, and other additive properties are known as antiparticles. Examples are electrons and positrons, or positive and negative pions. Each of the two types of particle can be thought of as the a