Phrenology revisited
— oh, the declared purpose is to decontrapualise…
SIX
It is with tribulation, and in the light of one diode in this world without living light that inside Plato´s cave (come in have a seat) I now declare to the world the sciences of morphology. This extension of topology was known to antiquity and ended inside (first the speculations of physicians over the female body) the racist take of phrenology; skull-measuring techniques.
What happened?
THERE IS MUCH THAT FAVOURS THE IDEA THAT A TRAGIC SHIFT, PHASE-SHIFT TOOK PLACE IN THE 1940s, IN THE 1880s, AS IN THE 1650s, AND AGAIN IN THE 1450s (note the increase in pace). Morphology it seems is an oceanographic desert, but to catch that bus see my You are Crazy I know, here at Medium.com.
A crazy-pot such as Campanella was experiencing social unrest in his native Calabria, this experience was common to very many of the thinkers of the REnaissance. His alliance with the French state saved him from the fate that e.g Bruno faced (on the other hand it seems the inquisition focuses less on his beliefs and more upon his connections). As Frances Yates (Yates 1964) shows how the mystics, though a powerful influence on Western culture in the era of late Medieval Society lost out to another branch of rinascimento, that of Erasmus (but she shows its affliliations to internationalist hermeticism, as to Thomas More who alludes to it in his Utopia).
Did the Babylonians (a proxy for the whole racket of 3000 yrs) shift effortlessly? It has been noted that the whole racket of the prophets (oh even of the so-called ‘invasion’ of the Hebrews into the Holy Land, i.e both of these events) cannot for all intents and purposes be seen to register inside the archaeology. Put different, the elites were indeed shuffled off to Babel and thrown into desolation, but the economic machine trudged along effortlessly it merely shifted hands… We have difficulties in pinpointing exactly what brought Babylon to its knees, in part it dissolved into something different, still this is a bit of a mystery like the maya cities, or even Rome (but here our problem is the multitudes of data). Might communication be (as I make clear in my profile story here at madium.com) the key, as Diamond discusses in relation to Joseph Tainter (at the end of his book Collapse, 2004).
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Is it a rat, is it a train, no its Bugs Bunny! Or rather it is not Bugs Bunny.
From a certain point of view the PITBULL is a docile beast, but being a Terrier it has autist traits.
The deductible of the brain (and MIND)
Westen never did Hegel, but using cybernetics it is finally (phuii!) possible after a long churning for me (drumbeats) to declare (even more drumbeats) the sets of ideas that underlie the idea of PSYCHOTYPE.
Contrary to what we might think Hume or Bacon should NEVER have been allowed into the painted-ceiling bedrooms of the mighty and powerful. There is after all a kind of mysticism attached to both thinkers. What should strike us the most is some of their influences in politics and economics, shame on them (or us to have allowed this!). But Graves will help us see how (and scholars are in general agreement) the 18th century was stale in terms of poetry, which is why it is possible to point to Hume in a sense as a bit of a mystic, but it’s true I regard Hume as a fellow morphologist. Westen too leans to morphologism, or the flow-logic of the right side of the brain. With the idea of ‘character’ follows C.W. Mills who was able to contextualise where it seemed impossible, and doing so he followed in Hegel’s footstep. Still it is now possible for us to (discussiong the dichotomy of the two hemispheres) see in Hegel the misunderstandings of time or what we call history, the case to be made for the state is the bugbear of the West, and it should be. But as you know if you have followed some of my work, it is a quirk of FRACTALISM (my take on cybernetics in history) to accept cartoonish characters in history. It is a bit complex to show how I side with Hegel, but his teleological march of history is NOT to my taste. I am in favour of doing both and all kinds, but will point the reader to this quirk of how cybernetics handles the ‘characters’ of history. It would NOT be possible for us to discuss psychopathy or autistic terriers unless a vogue for mental problems was afoot in our society — this allows that sort of gossip to take place. But it seems mental disability in complex ways relate to history (not ONLY to culture). This is one example of how dependent ‘things’ are of things which in turn relate to others, and in turn to others ad infinitum (cf. pragmatists such as Rorty). The skew for me is how MIND should be thought about or discussed. The cyberneticist is an extreme functionalist so much so that he slips into symbolic thinking, which to some is the arch-enemy of function or even of ‘society’ (conceived sociologically). We study what is, not what aught’st to be. But this is a clear and visible weakness in cybernetics generally, its range is in some senses ‘relative’ if not always limited for to some it borders on metaphysics, but I share Hume’s scepticism over the m-word.
PSYCHOTYPE is visible only historically, so that on the one hand cybernetics is bound to use the categories of ordinary science (cf. Kuhn) but on the other see the ‘appearances’ or showings of mental sicknesses historiographically. This I think is McLuhan’s part-time job (cf. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA-the extensions of man, 1964) as he castigates e.g photography and etc… Thus it (i.e the ‘psychotype’ as I conceive it) is 1) systems-dependent and 2) shews or appears out of the mists of time, or put different is made by history, and 3) is to be regarded for ease of use as malignant or ‘sick’, a reasonable if somewhat skewed supposition (but a necessary ‘boundary condition’ however transitory, a point at which I share Hegels ‘dialectic’ thinking, i.e relativism of history).
That Lovejoy relates how ideas fly through history is also related here, for in this line of thought the very psychotype of TIME is at issue. There is a sense in which Lovejoy is hated among historians of ideas, but My Dear Reader, why is that? Well for one he invented the discipline, but also cuts against the grey of what follows (i.e current research in the history of ideas and against the push of his day as he says of departmentalised science and specilisation), and thus we might ask why not just let Lovejoy have his nap of legend? BECAUSE — the P S Y C H T Y P E ! is my brave response, because I said so, that’s why! You see there is a sense in which de Saussure (another moulding fungus ‘mad’ professor) was there holding Lovejoy’s hand, you see BOTH are infamous muddlers, yes you caught that one right! Even though Lovejoy makes a GRAND narrative fly and tells a great story, many have argued that this is almost theological and borders on story-telling (and by extenso is non-scientific), they would be right. What they miss however is Lovejoy’s affiliation with the devil (small caps, meaning pragmatism as in Dewey or Pierce and James, the ‘evil’ brother of Henry James… it is easy to show the relation to Hermeticism, yet it is also easily proven that the right hemisphere is what is really tho thing these abhorrent philosophies have incommon). There is a sense in which Lovejoy gets caught up inside his act, thus becoming ONE with his one bugbear, the ONE etc of neoplatonicism haunts him through the pages (just watch the show!!!). Not that we should now relate how and why, but I think the notion that Lovejoy is necessitated to follow an OLD precept of the prisci philosophici (the perennial philosophers of Robert Graves, or Sir James Frazer), namely that when in doubt doubt more. Allow me to explain; if Plato had said like Aquino that ‘balance’ is the whole of the law (as Crowley said cryptically about his sectarian but at the same time anti-sectarian faith ‘crowleyism’), not only would Lovejoy have to go home, he’d have to remove Plato as well. Namely the idea of A P A T H I A is invented after Plato (for it might’uv destroyed his edifice!!). Apathia makes us escape CONTAPUALISATION (i.e mental conditions of psychotypical, and perhaps even of other kinds too, who knows, i.e ordinary mental sicknesses), but more importantly it is impossible to accept Lovejoy outside of the notion of Apathia (couched in part inside lovejoy’s work as ‘otherworldliness’).
This concludes this episode of sicknesses in history, see Ya in next part!!!
That my friend and I saw the marvel of the saw-flies gathering, the marvel as I percieve it is Hesekiel is the saw-fly whereas John is the domesticated bee — oh, My Dear Reader, this plot thickens. And the Babel that fell and the damned Ute of Utah, same same, both died out. But they died different
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I would like to add here that this rests to a large degree on my agreement with Adorno that we now have ‘nature’ in society, and not society in nature. In Adorno’s terminology the grind towards teleological closure is Weber’s Iron Cloak or Cage, an apocalyptic vision. Still the see-saw of this is shewed as Hitler manages somehow (on the thin ice of Moussolini’s fascism idea) to replace loyalty to (nature /das Volk) N A T U R E with loyalty to the state, a kind of charlatan move which for cybernetic purposes all civilisations worth their salt seem to do at the end of days (the reference here is NEITHER Spengler who is hardly a poor scholar, nor the book of revelations by John, but rather Joseph Tainter, cf. The collapse of complex societies).
Thank Yee all for reading this!!! This concludes this episode of sicknesses in history, see Ya in next part!!!
