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Embodying a multiverse of uncertainly ordered incongruity
Anticipating When Blackbirds Sing Chinese (Part #12)
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The engagement evoked by the poem on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird suggests that its intuited appropriateness's is indeed consistent with the cognitive challenge of uncertainly ordered incongruity -- a multiverse of requisite complexity in cybernetic terms.
The 13 stanzas of its poetic form certainly encourage a play on "multiverse" and the complex associations offered by imaginative astrophysical speculation on the coexistence of multiple universes. The cognitive focus here has highlighted an appropriate form of uncertainty cautioning against premature closure. The poem expresses a degree of incongruity consistent with the strange degree of order evident in a global civilization -- acclaimed as knowledge-based.
Threefold uncertainty: Rather than the twofold uncertainty of physics, that uncertainty might be more fruitfully described as threefold -- as usefully indicated by the dilemma as to which blackbird the poem refers:
- as raven, the sense of the technical sleekness of the SR-71 offers one frame, with which the expression "raven-haired beauty" is aesthetically consistent. Its etymological associations with the predatory sense of "seize by force", "rapine", "plunder" or "abduct", are also significant -- as has recently been made evident. The dark and terrible beauty is admirably echoed in the macabre work of Edgar Allan Poe, in addition to The Raven.
- as crow, the sense of exposure to accumulating waste and degradation is also appropriate, namely the challenge of systemic neglect and remaindering (Reintegration of a Remaindered World: cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2011). This is consistent with the humiliation of "eating crow". It is also consistent with the special insight traditionally associated with an archetypal "old crow", despite the disparagement of such a reference. The articulation of the associated wisdom is valuably presented by Ted Hughes' Crow
- as songster, the improbable sense of joy in life and the potential of the future -- with which the emphasis on the "positive" is so frequently associated. This is consistent with the experience of many and use of the phrase "a little bird told me".
In the terms of the previous section "looking" might well be consistent with the blackbirds in their "raven/crow" modality -- rather than in their "songster" modality.
Reality and imagination: The twofold is however strikingly apparent in the relation between reality and imagination, as variously indicated above. Especially relevant is the argument of Nüzhet Akin (From '0', the Logic of Imagination, to 'Ground Zero', the Imagination of Logic: the enigmas of Wallace Stevens' 'Blackbird' and current US action. Journal of Arts and Sciences, Sayi: 12 / Aralik 2009) regarding Mathematical Verification of 'Imagination' as Central Logic:
To begin with, the nature of the blackbird is axiomatic, that is, the blackbird is "aphorism whose truth is held to be self-evident. In logic an axiom is a premise accepted as true without the need of demonstration and is used in building an argument" ([C. Hugh] Holman, 1992). Therefore, the blackbird is there in the poem as a predominant solid fact that is meant to initiate an argument. Without the blackbird, there is no possible argument to be initiated. Since the existence of the blackbird cannot be ignored, it becomes a focal point of attraction that forces the readers' line of thought or vision. It establishes the readers' relation with the universe and his idea of it where the blackbird is.
Akin offers an "equation" relating man and women, as referenced in the poem, by 1 and 0, concluding:
"0" has no numerical value, but it cannot be ignored, because it is there. It also signifies what is not there. Therefore, "0" is different from other numbers because it signifies both a presence and absence. It signifies the idea of man, or his essential logic, which is his imagination.... Since "0" signifies the initial natural number, the blackbird stands for the initial step for the functioning of logic, which is imagination. In each stanza, the blackbird appears as the constant reminder of this initial step, or "the elementary logic" that the reader must take and consider when establishing logical correlations and setting "language, and the careful statement of basic incidence relationships through the use of appropriate symbolism" (Frank Allen, 1973). For Wallace Stevens, the language is poetry and the appropriate symbol is the blackbird, which is seemingly irrelevant to the context of the poem; yet it serves his purpose in urging the reader to initiate logical questioning about what seems illogical. Therefore, the correlation is in the mind of the beholder, as long as he lets "a new intelligence prevail" and hinders the "stale intelligence of the past" (George McMichael, 1985). The blackbird, the null element "0", or the elementary logic establishes the poem, "the poem of the act of the mind" (George McMichael, 1985)
Aesthetic paradox: Any such "equation" could be fruitfully explored in terms of the focus of the Euler identity. This offers a fundamental relation between reality and the imaginary -- understood as a paradox in mathematical terms. Its implications are discussed in a section on Enabling a reconciliation between one and nothing: p and the mysterious Euler identity in a related context (¿ Embodying a Way Round Pointlessness ? 2012). As noted there, the so-called Euler identity (or Euler equation) has been named as the "most beautiful theorem in mathematics" and has tied in a nomination by mathematicians for the "greatest equation ever" (Robert P. Crease, The greatest equations ever, PhysicsWeb, October 2004). It is presented as follows:
e i π + 1 = 0 |
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As noted by Wikipedia, its mathematical beauty. is associated with its use of the three basic arithmetic operations only once: addition, multiplication, and exponentiation. It also links five fundamental mathematical constants (Five constants tie together multiple branches of mathematics, 2008). Paradox: With regard to the comprehensibility of the Euler identity, the mathematicianBenjamin Peirce, is widely quoted as declaring at the end of a lecture in which he proved that identity:
Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth. (Quotation from Edward Kasner and J. Newman,Mathematicas and the Imagination, New York 1940)
This suggests that the theme of paradox merits recognition in the quest for sustainable globalization and in relation to the nature of "nothingness" in that context.
As a complement to the "beauty", there is then an interesting aesthetic challenge to embody "uncertainly ordered incongruity" in a form which contrasts with the elegance of the polyhedral sphere packing schematic above -- and is a challenge to it. A valuable candidate is the Szilassi polyhedron, notably because of the incongruity of its shape -- despite its mathematical uniqueness (7 hexagonal faces all in contact with each other -- 21 edges and 14 vertices). The "incongruity" of the form, as a schematic, offers a degree of resemblance to the form of a bird -- as an abstraction.
| Use of Szilassi polyhedron to illustrate "13 ways of looking at a blackbird" ? (prepared using Stella Polyhedron Navigator) | |||
The 7 faces are distinctively Use of colours recalls the observation above that the plumage of some "blackbirds" appears iridescent under ultraviolet light |  |  |  |
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| Animations of Szilassi polyhedron to show all faces highlighting the necessity of a dynamic, interrelating partial views, to enable comprehension of the blackbird in its totality | |
| Faces distinctively coloured (using colours of screen shots above) | "Blackbird variant" (transformation from/to memetic "stealth mode") |
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The animation on the right usefully highlights the manner in which "memetic stealth" may take the form of appearing to be linear -- camouflaging greater complexity apparent from the perspective of higher dimensionality emerging in time (The Isdom of the Wisdom Society: embodying time as the heartland of humanity, 2003). Any "memetic warfare" of interest in the noopolitical sphere could then be fruitfully understood as between the dynamics of emergent subtlety and the linear mindset of "business-as-usual".
Curiously black is a preferred colour of those challenging conventional modalities, whether SWAT Teams, Blackwater security agents for the US, blackshirts, anarchists, or poets identifying themselves as blackbirds -- as voices of strange dissent. Given the preoccupation of the above argument, there is a delightful irony to the improbable transformation of Blackwater into Xe in a period which has seen the emergence of Xi Jinping as the President of the People's Republic of China -- recalling the above-mentioned significance of the crow as a primary emblem of imperial China, last represented by the Empress Dowager Cixi a century ago. As a type of lyric poetry, Ci uses a set of poetic meters derived from a set of patterns based upon certain musical song tunes.
Further discussion of insights through the above polyhedron is provided separately (Mapping of WH-questions with question-pairs onto the Szilassi polyhedron, 2014).
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