{"id":28927,"date":"2014-03-27T07:43:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T06:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2014-03-27T07:43:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T06:43:53","slug":"the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/2014\/03\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soul of the Universe, Fabulous Discretion, and Dis-cyphering the Being of Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>* this is the manuscript to the\u00a0paper\u00a0<a title=\"Abstract: Serious stories around the fantastic dream of a mathesis universalis and the inception of Universal Algebra in the late 19th century\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2013\/08\/01\/abstract-serious-stories-around-the-fantastic-dream-of-a-mathesis-universalis-and-the-inception-of-universal-algebra-in-the-late-19th-century\/\">&#8220;Serious stories around the fantastic dream of a mathesis universalis and the inception of Universal Algebra in the late 19th century&#8221;<\/a> delivered at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/denominator-2014.tumblr.com\/\">The Common Denominator Conference<\/a>, Universit\u00e4t Leipzig, March 21st 2014.<\/p>\n<p>*******************************************************************<\/p>\n<p>The title of my paper announces \u201cserious stories\u201d around the inception of universal algebra, so let me perhaps begin by elaborating on that strange term. For are we not either dealing with stories, or seriously with issues that are real?<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 when I prepared the abstract for this talk and imagined what I would be speaking about, what I had in mind was a <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">compositional body of anecdotal stories<\/span><\/i> around the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">major protagonists<\/span><\/i> in the late 19<sup>th<\/sup> century scene of mathematics. There was something happening at that time to how we might think about number and calculation which I am trying to understand for quite some time now, because it seems to lurk behind any understanding of electricity, computers, code, and programming languages. In essence, what is at stake in these developments regards the question of what we might consider to be <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the transcendent referent of mathematical \u201cnecessities\u201d.<\/span><\/i> Herman Weyl has famously expressed the sentiments that surround these developments: with the symbolic numbers, he held, \u201cthe angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra are caught up in a fight about the soul of mathematics\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, I was thinking of giving a few accounts of how this drama actually did take place \u2013 I was thinking of speaking about how it might have come that what we today call <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">\u201cBoolean Algebra\u201d<\/span><\/i> has very little to do with the Algebra George\u00a0Boole envisioned in his <i>Laws of Thought\u00a0<\/i><a style=\"line-height:1.5em;\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn1\">[1]<\/a><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">, Or I was thinking of speaking about <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Richard Dedekind\u2019s<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> \u00a0\u00a0brilliant procedure of how to give categorial conceptions of numbers by instrumenting and orchestrating pairs of them such that they may create bodies of local rationality within the continuous ocean of real numerosity,<\/span><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">\u00a0 and how violently it was corrupted\u00a0\u00a0 in its genuinely <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">acrobatic character<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> when later generations have rather shamelessly linked up Dedekind\u2019s Cut with the axioms (Peano) of how to establish a hierarchical class-order of numbers within the transfinite cosmos of ordinality and cardinality. Or I was thinking of <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">James<\/span><\/i><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Joseph Sylvester<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">,<i>\u00a0<\/i>who is together with Arthur Cayley perhaps <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">the<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> eminent figure in the theory of invariants, and who wrote a rather idiosyncratic book entitled <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">The Laws of Verse, Principles of Versification<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> \u2013 a book which I profoundly misunderstood \u00a0\u00a0while studying long ago for my degree in literature \u00a0as a formalistic and somewhat soul-less attempt to disenchant even the art of poetry. Sylvesters\u2019 emphasis in <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">The Laws of Verse<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> on <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">that which never changes<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> (just as Boole\u2019s in <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">Laws of Thought<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">) \u00a0stand odd in the landscape of the time marked by the <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Romantic desire<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"> to dissolve all form into one collective unity from which an infinite amount of apparent Gestalten can be yielded \u2013 by the <\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">strictly balanced transformations of purely generic properties<\/span><\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">. I was also thinking of Robert Musil who expresses these Romantic sentiments perhaps most drastically in his epos, the <\/span><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Man without Quality<\/span><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">, which he begins with, quote \u201c<\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">A sort of introduction from which interestingly nothing follows<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">.\u201d He continues by giving an account\u2028of the protagonist\u2019s world as a logistic and strictly balanced place: \u201c<\/span><i style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">Over the Atlantic, there was a barometric minimum; it wandered eastward, towards a maximum over Russia, not yet showing any tendency of bypassing it to the north. The isotherms and isotheres were doing their job. Air temperature was in orderly proportion to the mean&#8230;\u201d<\/i><span style=\"line-height:1.5em;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In short, the seriousness of the event that marks the birth of <i>universal<\/i> algebra regards not algebra and its formulaic reasoning about unknown quantities itself, but the attribute \u201cuniversal\u201d<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> \u2013\u00a0can its computations count as <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">real<\/span><\/i> despite their symbolicness? or as <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">ideal<\/span><\/i> due to it?\u00a0 What I am interested in\u00a0 \u00a0in the following is not so much the disputes around the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">truth status of computations<\/span><\/i>, but <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the role which the nature of numbers plays for learning.<\/span><\/i> Thus the remainder of this paper will be about two serious stories \u00a0\u00a0that relate the nature of numbers to learning: Plato\u2019s <i>Timeaus<\/i> and Quentin Meillassoux\u2019<em>\u00a0Le Nombre et la sir\u00e8ne : Un d\u00e9chiffrage du Coup de d\u00e8s de Mallarm\u00e9<\/em>, a book on St\u00e9phane Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s <i>The Throw of the Dice<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>So let us turn to Platos <i>Timeaus<\/i>, the first text, arguably, which introduces a concept of the universal together with a procedure of how to make sense of the world in a general manner. It is the first account which does not tell the genesis of the world in purely mythical terms, that is by generations of Gods, but that aspires to tell this tale in a manner that allows for decoupling a method of understanding from the binding obligations to remain faithful to the traditions of linearly branching progeny. In all brevity, into the miracle of the genesis of the world \u00a0\u00a0Plato has introduced a governing principle \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0with which anyone can identify \u00a0\u00a0if she learns to understand it. The cosmological account of the Timeaus is one which desires to empower all people who care to deal with it. There are no <i>heroes<\/i> anymore in this space governed by the logics of the cosmos\u2019 fabrication, instead now there are <i>masters<\/i>. People who are sophisticated in the craft of ordering things, and this sophistication can be shared through teaching and learning, it is not restricted to the exclusiveness of being gifted by talents. Thus, let us see how, in the Timaeus, conceptual symmetries are established that allow for the exchange of craftmanship, artisanry, and technical skill according to such a universal method.<\/p>\n<p>The Demiurg begins by creating the <i>Soul of the Universe<\/i> as the <i>being of wholeness<\/i> which he intends to distribute equally between Cosmos and Earth. For this, we are told, the Demiurg takes \u201ethe three elements of the same, the other, and the essence\u201c (the citations are from <a href=\"http:\/\/classics.mit.edu\/Plato\/timaeus.html\">Benjamin Jowett&#8217;s translation<\/a>). He mingles them in a cup, and out of it he creates numericalness. This, he sets out to partition into measured blocks of pure ratios. Plato tells us: \u201eWhen he had mingled them [the same and the other, VB] with the essence and out of three made one, he again divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting, each portion being a compound of the same, the other, and the essence.\u201c Thus, the Demiurg proceeds in his partitioning of wholeness as follows: \u201eFirst of all, he took away one part of the whole (1), and then he separated a second part which was double the first (2), and then he took away a third part which was half as much again as the second and three times as much as the first (3), and then he took a fourth part which was twice as much as the second (4), and a fifth part which was three times the third (9), and a sixth part which was eight times the first (8), and a seventh part which was twenty- seven times the first\u2028(27).\u201c<\/p>\n<p>This account on how the Demiurg composes the blocks of ratios\u00a0sounds rather mysterious, but it\u2019s logics has a lot to do with Pythagoras so-called <i>Circle of Fifths<\/i>. In this, Pythagoras famously created his notion of numbers out of sounding harmony \u2013 he was capable of representing visually <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the lofty body of a sound<\/span><\/i> produced by one vibrating cord in such a manner that it became systematically measurable into the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys. I know too little about this, unfortunately, for explaining how Plato\u2019s adaptation works in detail. But Plato has, it seems, the Demiurg create the Soul of the Universe (1) by considering the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">conflicting natures<\/span><\/i> of the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">same<\/span><\/i>, the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">other<\/span><\/i>, and <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">essence<\/span><\/i> according to musical harmony, and (2) by engendering it in the character of blocks of ratio cut out of being of wholeness. Plato is strictly Pythagorean, by taking from him the idea of <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the circle in vibrating quickness<\/span><\/i> \u2013 rather than in its <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">geometric and timeless comprehensiveness<\/span><\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Ok, lets see now how the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Cosmos<\/span><\/i> is being created after this <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Universal Soul<\/span><\/i> has been engendered through fabulous discretion. In a manner strikingly similar to Richard Dedekind\u2019s procedure of the cut, according to which Dedekind grew capable of giving exact conceptual definitions of numbers, Plato\u2019s Demiurg takes all the numbers thus produced, he takes all of this partitioned and formed wholeness, which is now (after the preparations discussed) made up entirely of <i>blocks of ratios<\/i>, and he \u201ctook and stretched it and cut it into two\u201d, and \u201ccrossed, and bent\u2028[it] such that the ends meet with ends\u201d (Timeaus xx). Like this, two intertwined circles are created, an inner and an outer, and we are told that they revolve around the same axis. The motion of the outer circle is called <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the Same<\/span><\/i>, and the motion of the inner circle that of <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the Diverse<\/span><\/i>. To the outer circle belong the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">intelligible forms<\/span><\/i>, and to the inner belong the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">sensible and corporeal bodies<\/span><\/i>. But what both of these circles are made out of, namely <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the soul of the universe, is dispersed throughout all of it<\/span><\/i>. This is the precondition for Plato\u2019s Atomism to work: the triangle, this geometric atom which is the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">operable representant<\/span><\/i> of a <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">similarity notion that can claim to be universal<\/span><\/i>, can only mediate between the sphere of the intelligible and that of the sensible because the principle that animates both is distributed\u00a0discreteness, universal, and a visual representation \u2013 a snapshot \u2013 of <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">an articulatory trembling that stems from the restlessly circular swinging of a primordial chord<\/span><\/i> (between same, other, and essense). What links the diversity of how <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the elements<\/span><\/i> of fire, water, earth, and air, appear and decay in the sensible world \u00a0\u00a0to <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the solids<\/span><\/i> in perfect form and regularity in the cosmic sphere of the intelligible \u00a0is <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">blocks of universal wholeness<\/span><\/i>, numerosity cut apart into ratios each of which encapsulates <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">a split unit<\/span><\/i>. The universal does not <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">exist<\/span><\/i>, neither ideally nor in pure elementarity. It <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">insists<\/span><\/i> in all things being, in the distributed manner of the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">disparse and heterogenous<\/span><\/i> \u2013 or shall we rather say, by foregrounding its operational character: <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the disparse and the genital<\/span><\/i>? In any case, it is\u00a0the soul of the cosmos distributed in\u00a0blocks of ratios, units that embody a split, which allows for the figure of the Master to enter the stage of methodical thought and science. And the master is master for no other reasons than because she has learnt to be one.<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> Her authority is decoupled from a logics of progeny and God-given priviledge, and from now on entwined with artistry and craft that is <i>pursued methodically<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Let me dramatize a bit tendentiously why this appears so very interesting to me, with regard to the EVENT that is, according to Husserl and many others, supposed to mark the CRISIS OF SCIENCE at large: <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">universal algebra and its logistical principles of ordering<\/span><\/i>. In the Timeaus, quite obviously, <i>it is discreetness (and its nature)\u00a0\u00a0that <span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">grant<\/span> the possibility of <span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">learning within the openness of the Universe<\/span>. <\/i>Forms may well grant the possibility of recognition, and hence of knowledge, \u2013 but the split units, the blocks of ratios,\u00a0play a role more profound in that <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">they provide the possibility for our individual souls to remember<\/span><\/i> what had been intuitive to them before they had been born. There is, it seems to me, an entirely different approach to the notion of <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">intuition<\/span> \u2013<\/i> which, supposedly and according to many, has been dethroned (if not degenerated) and is being misappropriated on the basis of purely algebraic renderings. The accusation being that algebraic symbols are <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">amphibolic<\/span><\/i>, which means according to Kant, that they \u201cconfound an object of pure understanding with appearance\u201d. Yet precisely this is the very character of Plato\u2019s geometric atomism! It wouldn\u2019t work, if it were otherwise! Kant was well aware that amphiboly in the concepts of reflection introduces a peculiar kind of activity that he could not accommodate in his system of critique: <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Transcendental Deliberation<\/span><\/i><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> turns into the necessary intermediate between the two spheres of correlation in Kant\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n<p>So let us turn to our second protagonist, Quentin Meillassoux. His reading of Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s poem <i>The Throw of the Dice<\/i> as well\u00a0presents us a particular understanding of learning that is enabled through the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">distributive nature of numbers<\/span><\/i>. I must perhaps point out right away that Meillassoux himself does not see in what he describes an understanding of learning. Rather he wants to see in the poem the liturgical text of a <i>secular religion<\/i>, as he calls it. My own reading will not follow him in this direction.<\/p>\n<p>All right, to the poem then. Its main protagonist is, significantly, the generic persona of <i>the Master<\/i>. We encounter him on a boat in the midst of a stormy and wild sea, holding dice in his fist and pointing his hand into the air. The poem never resolves what the Master actually does or intends to do with the dice, whether he wants to throw them in order to learn about his near destiny, whether he believes that he can intervene in the \u201cfulfillment\u201d of what appears to be his \u201cpredicament.\u201d Are the dice a sign of the Master\u2019s despondence, his impotence to continue being what he is, a master, vis-\u00e0-vis the powers of cosmic chance that science has just began to affirm in the stochastic methods introduced by Laplace and others? Does the calculation with probability mark the ultimate end to any form of mastership, and instead enforce a more humble stance for man in a cosmos whose nature is determined indirectly, on the level of a second derivative, as a paradoxical determination of being undetermined?<\/p>\n<p>Most of the interpretations somehow unfold along these lines.<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn6\"><sup><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Yet the brilliance of Quentin Meillassoux\u2019s reading lies in presenting nothing less than an understanding of <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Mastership in an entirely original way<\/span><\/i>, which relies neither on annihilating chance nor on desiring to control it \u2013\u00a0but in engaging with the Being of Chance. His claim is to see in Mallarm\u00e9 a true <i>symbolist<\/i> master, because he sees him as having engendered his own numerical corpus\u2014i.e., a s<i>ymbolic nature<\/i> of numbers, from \u201cplacing\u201d in the manner of a distribution (hidden in the seemingly arbitrary meter of the poem) <i>the one number that cannot be another<\/i>: 707.<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn7\"><sup><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> The entire analysis of Meillassoux revolves around determining the \u201cidentity\u201d of this number\u2014as the <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">Being of Chance<\/span> that consists in<\/i> <i>making itself infinite<\/i>.<sup><sup><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn8\">[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>With this, we have a true affirmation of the idea that numbers allow for learning. If they allow for learning, then it must be their nature to allow for being engendered <i>in their kind<\/i> \u2013\u00a0and with this, we <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">step out of the mimesis tradition<\/span><\/i> where understanding meant only recognizing, and where no creativity is to be involved with regard to <i>what<\/i> we can learn to understand. On the other hand, if we can engender the nature of number in its kind, then we can <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">engender acts of thinking within thought<\/span><\/i>.<a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> And this, indeed, is what Meillassoux admires in Mallarm\u00e9. For his poem does not only <i>make one think<\/i>, in all vagueness and subjectivity such a statement ordinarily implies. Rather, I would like to postulate after reading Meillassoux\u2019 acrobatic performance in decyphering Mallarm\u00e9s nature of number which can be extracted and formalized, and thus generalized, communicated, taught and learnt \u2013 a method about how to counter what I would <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">call the improbability of learning what cannot possibly be anticipated<\/span><\/i>, as against <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">recognizing everywhere what we expect<\/span><\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Meillassoux\u2019 reading departs from <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">gathering a mixture<\/span><\/i> involving all that he knows of and that might be relevant to\u00a0 making sense of the poem: the semantics, the conventions of harmonic and graphical meter, the broader historical-political-cultural context as well as the history of the legacy Mallarme continues (poetry), and all hermeneutic aspects one can think of. We don\u2019t have a natural tendency towards learning, quite the opposite, he too seems to think. Our natural tendency is to recognize what we expect, thus <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">we must trick our own nature and dissolve our expectations by method<\/span><\/i> such that we can allow for the unlikeliness of learning to happen: and he creates one particular formal inventory out of all the distinctions he can think of.<\/p>\n<p>So how then does Meillassoux find this number, or rather, find that his number holds the clue, from within such a \u201cconfused\u201d and \u201coversaturated\u201d situation?<\/p>\n<p>He takes the noninitiate reader through a fabulous journey to how he ends up with the number 707, which\u2014in the finale of this speculative trip through possible codes\u2014turns out to be, and I am sorry for the prosaicness in putting it this way, <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">the chance variable we know from ordinary statistics, the sum of all the counted words<\/span><\/i>. The <i>number-that-cannot-be-another<\/i> facilitates to carry out probabilistic analysis on Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s text. Even in statistics, a <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">random variable<\/span><\/i> is <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">not a variable<\/span><\/i> strictly speaking, for it <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">has no fixed value<\/span><\/i>. In other words, it is not a magnitude of which we could ask metrical questions like <i>how much? <\/i>What it does <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">is label a number that counts a magnitude that is unknown<\/span><\/i>. As such, a chance number (I would prefer to call it an \u201cindexical magnitude\u201d) can incorporate a <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">possibility space<\/span><\/i>, and allow to experiment with it in probabilistic terms, by partitioning it into a set of events that can be combined in their interplay.<\/p>\n<p>Meillassoux\u2019 procedure might best be called <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">\u201chypothetico-inductive.\u201d<\/span><\/i> He experiments with adjoining (encoded metaphorical, nonmathematical) \u201cdomains of rationality\u201d for his hypotheses, and thus creates a hypothetical modeling space for studying distributions, patterns, and regularities that might fit into a certain metrical scheme. It manifests a brilliant example of how the \u201ctriangles\u201d \u2013 Platos <i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">geometric atoms<\/span><\/i> which allow for measuring \u2013\u00a0<i><span style=\"text-decoration:underline;\">must be symbolically contracted<\/span><\/i>: it must be opened up to articulation, and the scope of imaginativeness provides the alphabets of coding according to which a work, comprehended as a cypher, may be dis-cyphered (rather than deciphered). Because the \u201ckey\u201d does not decipher something that would have been there before the key and the particular reading it opens up has been engendered \u2013<\/p>\n<p>*********************************************************<\/p>\n<p>for a more detailed version of this reading of Meillassoux&#8217; book cf my article <a title=\"Articulating a thing entirely in its own terms Or: what can we understand by the notion of \u00abengendering\u00bb ?\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2013\/08\/14\/articulating-a-thing-entirely-in-its-own-terms-or-what-can-we-understand-by-the-notion-of-engendering\/\">Articulating a thing entirely in its own terms, or what can we understand by the notion of engendering?<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> cf. the article by Theodore Hailperin, &#8220;Boole&#8217;s Algebra isn&#8217;t Boolean Algebra, a description, using modern Algebra, of what Boole really did create&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/discover\/10.2307\/2689628?uid=3737864&amp;uid=2129&amp;uid=2&amp;uid=70&amp;uid=4&amp;sid=21103827183153\">online at Jstor<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref2\"><sub><sub>[2]<\/sub><\/sub><\/a><sub>\u00a0rather than simply \u201csymbolic\u201d or \u201cabstract\u201d<\/sub><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a> Verr\u00e4tselung<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a> (and, we must add with regard to Plato, because he happens to be speaking and reading Greek, male and a free citizen of Athens, i.e. not a woman or a slave). With regard to the change I want to stress out, between cosmogony and cosmology, these restrictions are not of principle relevance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> Andrew Brook and Jennifer McRobert, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wcp\/Papers\/TKno\/TKnoBroo.htm\">Kant\u2019s Attack on the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref6\"><sup><sup>[6]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> The \u201cdeath of the author,\u201d which was proclaimed by Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida, among others, was decidedly rooted in particular readings of Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s great character of our poem, the Master.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref7\"><sup><sup>[7]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> The whole argument is summarized in the chapter entitled \u201cSommes\u201d (Summations) in Meillassoux, <i>Le nombre et la sir\u00e8ne<\/i>, 47ff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref8\"><sup><sup>[8]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a> Significantly, in the subtitle of the German translation of Meillassoux\u2019s book, <i>d\u00e9chiffrage<\/i> is translated as <i>Verr\u00e4tselung<\/i>, not as <i>Entzifferung<\/i>, as with the English translation (decipherment). In English, <i>Verr\u00e4tselung<\/i> could perhaps best be expressed as \u201cdis-ciphering.\u201d\u00a0 It strikingly makes Meillassoux\u2019s point explicit: that Mallarm\u00e9\u2019s oeuvre seeks to <i>dissolve<\/i>, rather than to represent or even resolve, the nature of the divine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/#_ftnref9\"><sup><sup>[9]<\/sup><\/sup><\/a>This is the formula not only of Deleuze, but also of other Algebraists like Boole, Dedekind, Peirce, Hjelmslev:\u00a0 \u201cPenser c\u2019est cr\u00e9er. Il n\u2019y a pas d\u2019autre creation. Mais cr\u00e9er, c\u2019est d\u2019abors engendrer \u201cpenser\u201d dans la pens\u00e9e.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/quantitability.wordpress.com\/1865\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/quantitability.wordpress.com\/1865\/\" \/><\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.wp.com\/b.gif?host=monasandnomos.org&#038;blog=42221392&#038;%23038;post=1865&#038;%23038;subd=quantitability&#038;%23038;ref=&#038;%23038;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* this is the manuscript to the&nbsp;paper&nbsp;&ldquo;Serious stories around the fantastic dream of a mathesis universalis and the inception of Universal Algebra in the late 19th century&rdquo; delivered at the&nbsp;The Common Denominator Conference, Universit&auml;t Leipzig, March 21st 2014. ******************************************************************* The title of my paper announces &ldquo;serious stories&rdquo; around the inception of universal algebra, so let &hellip; <span><a href=\"http:\/\/monasandnomos.org\/2014\/03\/27\/the-soul-of-the-universe-fabulous-discretion-and-dis-cyphering-the-being-of-chance\/\">Continue reading <span>&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.wp.com\/b.gif?host=monasandnomos.org&amp;blog=42221392&amp;post=1865&amp;subd=quantitability&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[678,1],"tags":[1159,1149,1126],"class_list":["post-28927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dates","category-syndicated","tag-algebraic-concepts-characterized","tag-alphabets-of-coding","tag-thinking-as-an-algebraic-mechanist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29203,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28927\/revisions\/29203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meta.copyriot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}