jeudi 18 décembre 2014

A short note on the importance of the triolectic

I read it was Hegel who said that things are both coming into being and going out of being: the historical dialectic. (Full disclosure: I've never read Hegel, only the reviews: which is why I've never read Hegel). Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, thesis. Or Ramon y Cajal's exposition of the discontiguous synapse. (Others believed the nerves to be continuous.) Or "the forces of history" as the kind of phrase used by people for whom Newtonian mechanics were the best thing they had. F = ma. Great equation. Highly explanatory. No-one ever falls out of a window without it.
But it's easy to get stuck in binary oppositionalism. As a tool for illuminating nature, it's not bad, and certainly better than a greybeard spouting ex cathedra, but it has the dangerous flaw of situating a debate. You seek knowledge; you find yourself arguing around the village pump, because that's where the debate is, rather stravaiging into nature to make some original observations.
And this is the importance of triolectic football. Because what are you going to do with your knowledge? I've never actually played a game of triolectic football, but knowing it exists is surely most of its importance.

Update 1101h, 10/2/15:
 So funny!

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