Laws Of Form/Writing

[Charles A. Baldwin]

See Luhmann's systems theoretical "The Form of Writing" which pursues
exactly this angle, with a few comments vis a vis differences from
JDerrida. It's in Stanford Hum Rev, a couple years back, I think.
Spencer-Brown + Maturana/Verela's development of LOF are now the key
concepts holding together Luhmann's reflexive social systems. I don't
totally buy it, but it is one of the better adaptations of autopoeisis to
social/cultural matters.

Sandy Baldwin

 On Wed,
16 Jul 1997 MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:

> Following this very interesting thread on Laws of Form, and it seems
>  to me that this notion of the *mark*--the stroke of demarcation--is
>  also a way of describing WRITING in its deepest sense, the sense,
>  I believe, in which Derrida can claim that writing is not subsumed by speech.
>   The initial *mark* can be a vocalization as well as a grapheme,
>  the act of *demarcation* remains the same.  It is here that the
>  universe starts, for our purposes, and perhaps the self as well,
>  or the sense that the two are *different* (a thought that always
>  for some reason cracks me up).
> 
> It's the ur-metaphor, at the same time a gesture of supplication and a
>  transgression against the all-consuming ungrid Earth mother. 
> The price we pay for evolving a consciousness which knows,
>  sadly and above all else, its own Cartesian hum. 
>  Hmmmmmm?
> 
> A bit loopy, but not completely off the wall?
> 
> john m
> ******************************
> 
> >"To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only
> >to create, among the people one would rule, what we call...Bad History.
> >Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than
> >drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt,
> >through the midst of a People, - to create thus a Distinction betwixt
> >'em, - 'tis the first stroke. - All else will follow as if predestin'd,
> >unto War and Devastation.
> >
> >Compare with the first sentence of Laws Of Form:
> >
> >We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and
> >that we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction.
> >
> >Further on in LOF - although this probably falls under the rubric of
> >Kute Korrespondences - it's interesting to note Spencer-Brown's use of
> >the term "state."  As in "let a state distinguished by the distinction
> >be marked with a mark ( | ) of distinction."  This strikes me as exactly
> >the kind of thing that would catch TP's eye.  It is a State boundary
> >after all that our heroes are demarking.
> 
> 

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The emperor of the South Sea was called by Shu [Brief], the emperor of the
North Sea was called Hu [Sudden], and the emperor of the central region
was called Hun-tun [Chaos]. Shu and Hu from time to time cam together for
a meeting in the territory of Hun-tun, and Hun-tun treated them very
generously. Shu and Hu discussed how they could repay his kindness.
"All men," they said, "have seven openings so that they can see, hear,
eat, and breathe [presumably the original adds, "and excrete"]. But
Hun-tun alone doesn't have any. Let's try boring him some!"

Every day they bored another hole, and on the seventh day Hun-tun died.

--Chuang-Tzu (Watson trans.)