[MD] The differentiating nothingness

[Ham Priday]

Hi Dan (and Reinier) --


As Jimmy Durante used to say in his graveled voice, "Everybody wants 'ta get
inta da' act!"

I had asked Reinier how negation would define physical entities without
nothingness:


> How do you account for forms that we separate
> by shape, such as square, round, triangular, rectangular?
> None of these would appear to have a "negational"
> counterpart.

Dan replied:

> This reminds me of Buckminster Fuller's work.
> All forms have what he called complementaries...the
> form of a triangle (for example) isn't simply one
> triangle. Rather (according to Fuller) it is actually two
> triangles...the triangle delineated by the area inside the
> lines, and a second triangle delineated by the area
> outside the lines. This second triangle negates the
> first...one would not exist without the other.

That's like my analogy of a drinking glass.  It has an inside and an
outside.  You couldn't have a glass without both.  I don't think that's an
example of negation so much as eidetic imagery.  The point is that we can
look for these anomalies "after the fact" of their existence.  We don't
experience or imagine them in normal thoughts about objects in their
absence.

What Reinier and I are trying to do is come up with a hypothesis for
creation from pure undifferentiated "beingness", which we are both calling
Essence.  I maintain that we cannot "carve out" a finite thing from Essence
without negating the background, that when we perceive a thing we
intellectually annul or negate all that surrounds it.  For me, that's an
application of nothingness; for Reinier it's imagining the thing
simultaneously with its no-thing counterpart.  He says "you cannot create
something without creating it's negate."

I then asked:
> Do you separate me from you by imagining a
> "not-me" and a "not-you"?

You answered:
> Of course we don't imagine a "not me" and a
> "not you" per se.  Imagine a three dimensional
> triangle (tetrahedron) and think of the two tetrahedrons
> that compose the one.

I take it that, whether it's a tetrahedron or a person, you're suggesting
that we must negate the space or surrounding beyond the physical boundary of
that object or person to distinguish or delineate it.  Does ignoring the
surround amount to reducing it to nothingness in your opinion?  If not, what
does our rejection of the beingness "outside the line" amount to?  If so,
where does the form of the image come from?

I think it's possible to resolve the negation issue through logic, or at
least come up with a plausible theory for it.  But what we still face is
accounting for the form of the object, and that I'm afraid is beyond our
grasp.  I've not read Pirsig for awhile, but I suspect he believes universal
forms (Platonic ideas) to be pre-planted out there in Quality, so that all
we have to do is access them from the collective Intellect -- that is,
presuming we're "sufficiently evolved" to recognize them.

Do you care to offer some theories that might be applied to a Creation
hypothesis, mine or Pirsig's?

Regards,
Ham