[xmca] The "mechanical OTHER" at the heart of Modernity

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy & Huw

I want to thank you for your wonderful passionate dialogue on bringing the
abstract to the concrete.

As I'm struggling to listen in [within my ZPD] I believe this talk is
central to my understanding.

I also am trying to locate the "temporal" in this process as Mike is asking.

I did not want to interrupt the conversation between Huw and Andy but
wanted to post a paragraph I "sense" may be exploring similar topics. It is
by Eugene Halton in his revoicing Mead in his article "Pragmatic E-Pistols"
as he writes to Mead to say how his ideas are NOW received. [p.46]

Halton is talking to Mead about Peirce's idea that a SIGN has a REALITY at
any given moment as a POTENTIAL EXISTENCE. He then writes,

Modern materialism would consider all of this reducible to ACTUAL
existence.  Peirce claimed that such a NOMINALIST way of thinking, shaving
OFF generality in the name of Occam's razor, actually cuts its own throat
and ultimately renders science inexplicable. What if the modern era and its
earnest scientists have been working for the MYTH of the macine, PROJECTING
the subjective CLOCKWORK culture of their time ONTO the objective universe,
truly DISCOVERING with the PRECISION of William Blake's painting of Newton,
the TRUTH of the SINGLE-visioned PART, while sacrificing the VISION of the
whole reality?  Blake's Newton, supple but hunched over his COMPASS,
blinded to his SURROUNDS, is a VISUALIZATION of the paradox of ACCURATE
viewing of the PART and blindness to the whole.  To put this in Peircean
terms, MODERN SCIENCE is corrupt in its NOMINALISM, treating the REALITY OF
GENERALITY which are the BASIS [round, foundation] of its LIFE, as
UNREAL...... The modern worldview has been dominated by the MACHINE, by the
universe of a giant CLOCK, and more recently the brain as a computer.
These are NOT simply empty metaphors, but LIVING symbols of the MYTH OF OUR
TIME, namely, that ultimately REALITY is a kind of machine and WE BUT PARTS
of it.  The mythic element in this is the IDEALIZATION of the machine as
defining nature, OF THE AUTOMATIC [closed designed systems]  AND the
SIMULTANEOUS denigration of the SPONTANEOUS. [which becomes shadow]  ...It
[the machine model] is an ALIENATION of human PURPORT, of the automatic
portions OF PURPORT [ DESIGNED activity???]  EXPANSIVELY PROJECTED out,
IRONICALLY [rhetorically??] in the NAME of anti-teleological and even
anti-mythical as VIRTUAL DIETY substitute.  Today that IMAGO [living
cultural-historical metaphor] has come to DOMINATE in the diffusion of
TECHNOLOGY [techne] and its COLONIZATION of the self through a plethora of
devives.""

I am not sure if others are linking or bridging these ideas to the
conversation betweenHuw and Andy but I for one see "family resemblances"

Larry
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