Evolutionary Structural Metaphor

A metaphor used by Darwin in his ‘working out’ of the evolutionary model, and used in the first edition of The Origin, but dropped in later editions, for reasons unknown but speculated upon.

The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.

Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, ed. J. Burrow from first edition, Harmondsworth, 1968: 119

The speculation ranges from the sexual connotation of the word wedge, and the unconscious reference it makes to the Wedgwoods, part of Darwin’s extended family through marriage.

What we must do ….

Those things which we cannot theorize, we must narrate.

Walter E. Stephens, “Ec[h]o in Fabula” Diacritics 13 (1983): 51

What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Proposition 7.

It is only within the last century and a half, since Hooke first promulgated his views respecting the connexion [sic] between geological phenomena and earthquakes, that the permanent changes effected by these convulsions have excited attention. Before that time, the narrative of the historian was almost exclusively confined to the number of human beings who perished, the number of cities laid in ruins, the value of property destroyed, or certain atmospheric appearances which dazzled or terrified observers. The creation of a new lake, the engulphing [sic] of a city, or the raising of a new island, are sometimes, its is true, adverted to, as being too obvious, or of too much geographical interest, to be passed over in silence.

Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, Volume I: 399.

Writing Knowledge

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It’s been one of those days. The jargon, the linguistic attempts at blindsiding, language as a shibboleth; language in all its depth, variety and imprecision. And then this small but beautifully formed piece, quoted above, on McSweeney’s (read the rest here). Also see Charles Bazerman’s Shaping Written Knowledge.

Constructing a Reading Memory

Niklas Luhmann described Zettelkasten, his research filing system, as his ‘reading memory‘. As a researcher, with a room full of papers and books, I am fascinated, like Taking Note, with how people construct their systems and archives.