Is there a natural
Or maybe a spiritual phenomenon where designed objects / created objects in their final form can re-realise that form into a new form. What happens to the original form? Does it echo in the new? I was a scientist and then rearranged that form into a new form – the artist. What happens when a form.. like a toaster is locked into that form. Is that a spiritual death? The Evolver (non-teleological machine whose purpose is just to behave.. and attempt to record that behaviour) never allows itself to be locked into a form. To change a toaster into something else.. the world around it – the environment is the thing that must radically change. i.e this makes the toaster a context-dependent object. What the world around it looks like – matters to what it is. How much must the world change for a toaster to re-imagine itself as for example – a hammer?
The deeper question is.. can we ever change ourselves or is our identity completely locked into the identity of the environment / the world around us?
take an umbrella:
An umbrella is a perfect object. Invested in its teleology of being an umbrella. Evolved in the hands of its designer to a single purpose (as opposed to that of the more general – evident in biological evolution.
Can this object be rearranged to a new form and retain an echo of its former perfection.. or a bastardization of that teleology
These are the bones of the umbrella – skinless.. rearranged into a new form – here.. a drawing.
We can classify the kind of rearrangement of this thing which we can maybe now call the thing / object a system… open with possibility.
A level (i) rearrangement – retains ALL the elements from the original object in its new iteration;
a level (ii) rearrangement – misses some parts;
a level (iii) rearrangement – may have extra parts from another object or just random objects;
a level (iv) rearrangement has the substructure modified (i.e bent or snapped etc)
The above ‘umber all’ is a (ii/iv) rearrangement.
Another completely context dependent object: The toaster here separated in space from itself to reimagine itself.. The object with agency.. using me to change it.. to become something new… here the object is not adapting its environment it is rejecting its environment..
This toaster separated in space is a (i/iii/iv) rearrangement.
This has echoes of current thinking in biology. For a long time the dream was that if you know the DNA of an organism you will Know the organism. i.e the DNA being the only necessary determinant of its identity. Turns out it is not so simple after all… the genes are no blueprint.. This being eloquently expressed in Phillip Ball’s book: ‘How life works’ (PICADOR 2023) which I am reading (slowly- thank you Grant!)… here quoted, “We’re trained to focus on the “information content” of biomolecules like RNA and proteins, but here that’s less important than the dynamic process in which they are made.” it is a re-think in the way that we think about of the primacy of DNA as the sole determinant – A consequence of atomism – the Democritean direction that modern science took. If Hereclitus and his descendents had had there way – we would not be at all surprised by this rethink of modern biology – here a world is allowed to be more fluid and dynamic and much harder to pin down.
Encourage measurement to be less sure of itself.
