Comments on: Zuggtmoy/Juiblex Complex

By: A Taxomomy of Evils and the Demoness Ontology of Powers in Vitalism « Frames /sing

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:57:17 +0000

[...] comtemorary posts elsewhere: Naught Thought here, there and whence; Complete Lies thence; The Whim thither; Eliminative Culinarism (6-11-09) wither. [...]

By: The Zuggtmonic Drive: (Dark) Intelligence Without Center « Frames /sing

The Zuggtmonic Drive: (Dark) Intelligence Without Center « Frames /sing — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:04:02 +0000

[...] Naught Thought raises the image of Dark Vitalism and first associates it with the Demoness Zuggtmoy of fantasy lore, suggesting that if we allow an ontology of powers that bubble up from below, from the very matter of matter, we are faced with a world primordially chaotic of its intents. Any intelligence is swarming, polyvalent but still planal, or vectored, like so much threatening mold and fungi that at most grow up from and adhere to an omni-present death process: Park of of the work of a dark vitalism is the sickening realization of such an image [Zuggtmoy, Queen of Fungus]. Steven Johnson’s Emergence begins with Toshiyuki Nakagaki’s work on slime molds in which he made one of the amoeba like creatures find a path through a maze towards a food. The mindless functioning of life, of life moving towards goals without any form of intelligence – creatures that function in a completely bottom up fashion (the rest). [...]

By: Zuggtmoy: Demoness Ontology in Dark Vitalism « Frames /sing

Zuggtmoy: Demoness Ontology in Dark Vitalism « Frames /sing — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:58:19 +0000

[...] to the metal toxicity. Thought to omnipresently live on the “radiance” of decay, the demoness is the quintessential invisible deity of the grave, loathsome to mourners and keepers of the dead, [...]

By: Ben Woodard

Ben Woodard — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:24:09 +0000

I’m still not sure how to think the relation of the pattern and emergence – emergence suggests a non-intentional behaviour or set of behaviors between already constituted objects (like ants in an ant colony). A pattern suggests a sensorially decided bound be placed on the moving objects which is recognizable. What is inside a constellation is a storm of indirect effects of the points – I think there is a discussed divide of ontological and epistemological emergence. What we could say about life is that its creation is ontological emergent or, at least, it is an identity and not a datum since we cannot say why life emerges but that once a life is classified as human, or monkey etc. we must question then what kind of differences are real or have real effects versus patterns which group movements via categories.

I’m not really sure – this is something I’m trying to figure out.

-Ben

By: Nicola Masciandaro

Nicola Masciandaro — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:31:08 +0000

Ben,

Thanks for the clarification of how you see the question. I habitually start from the assumption that subjectivity belongs to everything, that there is always a *here* there. But the problem totally remains, *what* is the pattern? We might try to think the relational intersection between the pattern and the emergence, the former being a perceptible through with the latter appears, preferably in a situation where we cannot hold anthropocentric models of local situations, somewhere where the separation of pattern and emergence seems essential, where they don’t talk to each other (no possibility of city planning). Here the example of the constellation is pretty interesting. What is the inside of a constellation? Or what is the relation between Brooklyn and two people living there without knowing the other does? There is a cool way in which this kind of gap is a real relation, the substance of the emergence, the event allowing the constellation to appear or a swarm to have a direction of its own. Our situation suggests that for there to be a Brooklyn, it is necessary that such a thing never exist, or exist only as traces of itself? what Levinas calls ‘the insertion of space in time’?

Best,

Nicola

By: kvond

kvond — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:42:13 +0000

Excellent post (and wonderful comments), will be building something upon this, I hope.

By: Ben Woodard

Ben Woodard — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:22:00 +0000

Hi Nicola,

For me the issue of whether emergence is objective or subjective is connected to the task of removing the taint of anthrocentrism from science. That is, the issue is whether the difference made by emergentism (such as the activities of an ant colony) is an ontological category or even existence outside of human observation –basically what is the metaphysical purchase of a pattern?

Your point about interior/exterior is well taken – the question becomes of the meaning of the interior of the emergence as something philosophizable/thinkable or not. We could say that the patter is exterior and only ever aesthetic or a surface effect but then the problem of the pattern’s interior comes into question.

Also, I only just realized you are a fellow inhabitant of Brooklyn. Cheers.

By: Nicola Masciandaro

Nicola Masciandaro — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:35:07 +0000

And the “sickening realization of such an image” is also “no special event,” no? That would seem to be the equation urged by a “dead space” which only proves the impossibility of there being such thing (not to mention the darkly vital neutrinos generating in beta decay). As the language of the example of a slime mold in a maze would suggest (the *thought* of a bottom up function), I see no hope or reason for trying to decide emergence as either “merely an objective or subjective category.” Emergence is a phenomenon that like another has an inside and and outside. All the more so as the form proper to emergence (as Bachelard discusses in his chapter on shells) is something always partly in and partly out. Am totally out of my depth here and haven’t read anything on this subject, but it would seem that the shell structure is functionally mappable across just about everything, atoms to galaxies, that what emerges always takes an inside/outside shell structure. Even Shedaklah is a duo-layer. So also “mindless” life is a spectral projection of a mind gropingly in touch with the contours of its own blindness.

By: Incognitum

Incognitum — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:05:24 +0000

Ben, perhaps you have seen this recent publication on the life and theories of Ernst Haeckel (inspired by Oken): ‘The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought’

For the most part, the book remains a conservative study of Haeckel’s life in relation to his theories but it has a great deal of information on Naturphilosophie and the protoplasmic substratum.

Another source book is ‘Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe’