Week 4: The Syllogism, Gothic Architecture, and other mattters

We look first at a fairly loose act, or at least a gesture which we may be inclined towards but maybe lacking in a certain precision. We categorize. We can do this for any number of reasons. Bioilogy strikes us as a common example. We categorize animals and in fact we know that the system of categorization or classification has shifted over centuries. Aristotles Categories however are intended to be far more penetrating than that, at least presumable, in so far as they penetrate to the limit of what can be said about what. That is, it tends toward exhaustion. And specifically what can be predicated in its greatest generality of something particular, a subject. In this gesture Aristotle at once initiates an entirely new standard of systematic thought and severs his metaphysic from Plato. Whereas for Plato considered the realm of Universals (Forms) as separate and distinc from particulars, in Aristotle Universals participate in particulars. (Plato's contribution we recall is to distinguish the world as such from the universe, one of the implications being that . . ?). Simple as it may sound, the distinction between subject andpredicate will provide us perhaps the first insight into a systematic terminology that allows for logical manipulation. It is the terminological reduction that is important. For the content can now be whatever and the terms can glide across what exists and what is the case of what exists relating, pairing, disti guishing, contrasting and so on. But as for the rules by which we can do this, we are not completely there yet. The syllogism describes a systematic means, a mechanism, a process, a set of rules, or rather just is all these things, by which we can exhaust the validity of inferences about the relationship between particulars and universals. It is not a picture of the world, it is not an analogy, but rather . . . Hmmmm.

Was an intersting point that someone made about google and emergence and whether or not the algorithm could be said to underlie the temple, not onlyu the gothicv building.

See also explicitness of argument and process of construction - in addition the relation between part and whole. Notice that, although Panofsky speaks of geometry, the model of meaning to which he aspires is that of logical argument. See also emergence.

Ok, these are some primitive notes, and I'll formalize them more later. There is also a lingering issue about the part whole stuff, by which I mean a difference between part/whole in geometry and part whole in the syllogism (?). I mean: Panofsky says a lot about geometry, but I can't remember where he speaks of it as a founding metaphor or even as a model of meaning. But, we'd have to go back and see.