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    Edges
    Edges
    Edges
    Ebook63 pages51 minutes

    Edges

    By Noel Gray

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    About this ebook

    Certain ideas are axiomatic to navigating and defining existence. As necessary markers they are generally considered to be unproblematic in their everyday use and understanding. This is rightly so, because any unbridled and ceaseless challenge to their obvious necessity would result in a constantly stalled experience of existence. One other such experiential necessity, and perhaps even the most important one at the level of the everyday, is that of the Edge. All concepts of difference, from the ethereal to the material, from the ideal to the empirical, from words to things, from desires to actions, from past to present to future, demand some form of border in order to differentiate each from each, this from that.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNoel Gray
    Release dateAug 2, 2018
    ISBN9788828368441
    Edges

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      Book preview

      Edges - Noel Gray

      References

      Editor's Note

      Edges is the third book in a series that covers a period of twenty-five or so years of academic writing by the author. Some of the essays in this series have previously appeared as book chapters in other scholars' publications, while several have appeared as articles in numerous American, Australasian, Middle Eastern, and European academic journals. Other essays originated as conference papers, and several as invited responses to keynote and conference speakers; a few have been re-drafted from guest lectures given by the author. The last in the series, Screens , is a scaled-down version of the author's doctoral thesis in which he initially developed his early ideas concerning the philosophy of geometry. Other elements from the thesis also appear throughout the rest of the series.

      The themes included in the entire series range from philosophy to geometry, from aesthetics to cultural studies, and from science to fine arts. Many have either as a central or as a cursory element the role that geometry, and by extension, the image, play in the production and construction of meaning in both the sciences and the humanities. Others touch on the truth claims made by various disciplines, while a few seek to examine in an oblique fashion the porous nature of what many disciplines consider their boundaries. The role and mercurial nature of specific metaphors is also a recurring theme in many of the essays.

      In most cases, the texts have been wholly or partially trimmed of their original academic format in the hope of making their contents more appealing to a wider audience.

      Laura Fabbris

      Series Editor

      FOREWORD

      Among his countless other attributions, the messenger Hermes (Mercury) is also the god of transitions and boundaries. The second youngest of all the gods, he is the only one who can travel through the three realms of existence: Olympus, Earth, and Hades. As the god of borders, (literally and figuratively), and the carrier of souls to the underworld, he can breach the divide between the material and spiritual dominions. On one occasion he dons the famed cap of invisibility, enabling him to cross enemy lines undetected and slay a formidable foe of his father, Zeus. Hermes' multi-faceted, mercurial personality, alloyed to his love of trickery, inventiveness, deceitfulness, and confidentiality earned him the sobriquet, the god of contradictions. An apt appellation, for the symbol of this fleetest of all ancient divinities is the unhurried tortoise. An irony further enhanced by the fact that this amphibian creature can exist both inside and outside its own skeletal boundary, at one and the same time. It therefore seems an ideal image to portray the one force that can violate all borders yet leave them intact: the incalculable speed of simultaneity, the duration of which, as the Greeks well knew, is best imagined divinely, best left to the Gods.

      Certain ideas are axiomatic to navigating and defining existence. As necessary markers they are generally considered to be unproblematic in their everyday use and understanding. This is rightly so, because any unbridled and ceaseless challenge to their obvious necessity would result in a constantly stalled experience of existence. This danger is no more graphically illustrated than in the Centipede's Dilemma:

      A centipede was happy – quite!

      Until a toad in fun

      Said, Pray, which leg comes after which?

      Which threw her mind in such a pitch,

      She lay bewildered in the ditch

      Considering how to run.

      As aptly indicated, abilities that become automatic often cease to function in an effortless manner when brought back to the conscious level. This is also true of certain formative ideas that govern the comprehension of existence. As the renowned scientist, Arthur Eddington, once amusingly said: I know perfectly well what time is until I try to explain it to someone else.

      One other such experiential necessity, and perhaps even the most important one at the level of the everyday, is that of the Edge. All concepts of difference, from the ethereal to the material, from the ideal to the empirical, from words to things, from desires to actions, from past to present to future, demand some form of border in order to differentiate each from each, this from that. Acting to both define and separate, when these edges are challenged or even erased, then the resounding clash often generates an unavoidable sense of uncertainty and

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