In those days Pt. 9.

[Doktor Howl]

It's also really easy to talk about the reality or unreality of a chair

Um, yeah, and it's just as easy (and productive) to talk about the aether.

[Jasper]

/Re-jack

...So yeah.  Mythic figures of science and their spiritual impact.  That's a great theme.  Hey Kai, where do you want this to go?  I should probably say, what direction from here inspires you the most?

[Freeky]

Yeah, do tell, Kai.

[Kai]

I'm not sure yet.

For the first ten, I just took a topic, like the magic well, the tangled bank, the power of names, the molecular revolution as a religious rise and fall. Then I wrote it, in one sitting and usually within 10-15 minutes time.

I haven't run out of topics, but I'm not sure this is how I want to continue.

[Kai]

I really like the idea of the Tangled Bank. 

It's a Darwin metaphor, originally for the complexity ecology and biology that evolution has wrought. But under myth it becomes a godlike teeming mass of the universe, of Emergence condensed. Is this much different than you are reading it?

[LMNO]

Yeah, that's pretty much how I'm reading it.  You can devise a dozen analogies and levels of metaphor, like the difference between the stone fortresses of knowledge and the chaotic tangle of What's Really Out There, to make one example.

[Kai]

I've been getting ideas on writing a fantasy story based on some of this. Probably not in this series though.

[LMNO]

If you have time, check out Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  It has similar themes, sort of.

[Jasper]

Have you read that semi-famous Dresden Codak comic where D&D fantasy fuses with philosophy?  I'm seeing something along those lines, except with science history fusing itself to more Tolkien-ish/Greek mythology.

[Kai]

If you have time, check out Neal Stephenson's Anathem.  It has similar themes, sort of.

You've mentioned it before, and it does have some similar themes, but much more authoritarian.

Have you read that semi-famous Dresden Codak comic where D&D fantasy fuses with philosophy?  I'm seeing something along those lines, except with science history fusing itself to more Tolkien-ish/Greek mythology.

I've seen it.

I've been thinking about, what would constitute magecraft in systematics? What sort of system would allow that to operate? And I thought, well,

What if there's this collective memory of humanity, something that with great meditative effort people can learn to access?

What if this memory is incredibly disorganized, ranging from here to there, seldom filtering well?

What if Linnaeus, sitting in a field near his house contemplating the Tangled Bank broke through to the collective memory and realized that names served as the filter to reveal information?

What if the entire system of biological nomenclature was designed so that these names would be held in the collective memory and information about kinds of organisms would be easily accessable to those who had the name?

Then a namemage would, through her ability to access the collective memory and knowledge of names and ways of searching could be very much like some sort of fantastical magic.

[Jasper]

Hey, that's pretty cool!

Puts me in mind of the power of naming Re: maps & territories, the way names allow maps to work, thereby in some ways allowing intelligence and awareness to work in terms of reality.