..Not in the least bit Pynchonic -- space

[Michael Bailey]

Ian posted of late -

- recommended _Looking for Spinoza_ by Antonio Damasio, and it's on my
to-read list now

(also somebody recently recommended Joseph O'Neill and I'm really
enjoying his novel _Netherland_
and have O'Neill's non-fic as well as Menand's _Metaphysical Club_ out
from the library also )


> areas, but leaves the greater question unaddressed. Also, this is the
> more utilitarian path of discussion of space, the other is, well,
> airy.
>

well, yes and no...

not that I mind having airy ideas - au contraire

but, the admittedly incomplete representation of 3 onto 2 nevertheless
allows maps, portraits and all manner of useful phenomena, plus it has
a rigor of its own (projective geometry)

and in fact within a mapping type of head-space it is highly useful
and a non-trivial pursuit

Another example - writing a novel doesn't adequately represent life,
there is almost nothing similar between words on a page and the
experience of living.  But somebody creating a reading and writing
space is not therefore not worth doing...

further, and in tune with your initial notion of the inadequacy of
certain forms of representation
-- didn't TS Eliot or somebody say a metaphor is a sign of a lazy mind
or something like that
- and Ayn Rand definitely said A is A (-;
--- which is to say,
"maybe there is a general case which our specific objections to
spatial metaphors instantiate"

more trivial thoughts:

Other than presenting somebody with space itself for demonstration
purposes, which is unnecessary because we're already there, all
attempts to communicate on the topic are metaphorical and depend on an
increasing series of approximations and slight or major alterations to
customary usage to cover the developing contingencies

I think space *is* just a container...for whatever phenomena you are
investigating, describing, experiencing, be they ever so humble or
magnificent

or -- Space has the single known (knowable?) property of being able to
contain whatever we can find or make within it

I see how that idea might be open to criticism (ie, tautologically
speaking, "Space contains things" and "space is that which contains
things" isn't what you'd call a really useful "definition space", at
first blush)
- but I still like it...