>We must be careful to distinguish between the intrinsic properties of the
>world, whatever they are, and our description of them through theories,
>concepts, hypotheses, laws, principles.
I recall here that the imagination is always deficient in coming up with
possiblities of usage or properties. We tend to be guided by the context
in which we find ourselves, no? Therefore the seen or apparant affordances,
as I understand them, are always less than actual (?) affordances,
potential. or what we might be calling intrinsic ones.
Which again touches on issues of the sacred versus the profane.
The sacred tends to be that which has one affordance (or one place where the
object is used, and it so constrained into the context that other affordances
tend to be blocked from the imagination). Context being, the locus of
action where different relationships come into contact or play.
I am also reminded of architect Peter Eisenman's phrasing:
"Syntactic meaning is not concerned with the meaning that accrues to
elements or actual relationships between elements but rather with the
relationship between relationships."
David
D S Hendler
Graduate English Department
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-1122