x,y,z

"About evening a man is known."

Irish proverb

 

 

"Nec pistoris nomen erat, nisi eius qui ruri far pinsebat." Nor did the noun pistor (a crusher) exist, except for the man who ground corn in the country.

 Varro

 

Why did the chickens cross the road?

 

One Friday evening, Isaac Newton walks in to a bar, and the bartender says, "what do you like?"

Newton says, "I'll have an Apple Sidecar." Bartender says okay.

A little leprechaun, smoking his pipe, enjoying an Irish coffee, recognizes him and asks, "hey, Isaac, why did the chickens cross the road"?

Newton says, "of course, chickens at rest tend to stay at rest, and chickens in motion tend to stay in motion."

The leprechaun chuckles and says, "okay, and whether they are at rest or in motion, they tend to remain chickens too? Why is that? is it the chicken or the egg?"

Newton says, "well, of course, it's the gravity of their situation."

The leprechaun enjoyed this answer but was not satisfied with Newton's theory, and asked, "if the gravity of their situation is 'when' they are chickens, 'when' they are being chickens too, what is 'gravity' like then, the chickens and their eggs? or is 'gravity' a supreme genus like 'when' ?"

Newton looked at him quizzically.

"Ens inquantum ens, is the 'gravity' of chickens more like chickens or like 'when'? After all, there can be gravity without chickens, but there cannot be any gravity without some kind of when, quo tempore, as it would be."

Newton answered, quoting his famous book the "Principia", p.443, saying, "to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our seas."(1)

"I read your book", answered the leprechaun, "and to tell you the truth, it seems you would deprive facts for the trouble of finding them. I think you took a leap of faith in the wrong direction and fell out of one of Porphyry's trees. You're quite into the roads of metaphysics for comparisons, not natural empirical science, and your notion of absolute space -- where you say absolute and mean infinite -- is wrong for directions."

Newton was taking his drink, and the leprechaun continued in his friendly manner, "the order of the cosmos is not so much a priority in its size, as in the quality of the aspects. A dodecahedron the size of Texas is a dodecahedron, as well as another the size of a sand pebble, and the force of gravity cannot be universal without making everything heavy.

If gravity were universal, it would leave nothing light. Everything would become crushingly heavy, and that would be the end of it."

"You know Zeus became an ant to give rise to the Myrmidons of ancient Greece, the Achaean host of Achilles' crew, but I don't know who did what to give rise to the likes of you," said Newton.

"Well, I don't mean to bug you, certainly", answered the leprechaun, "but it's in the treatment of trifles that a man shows who he is, and I must say, rather, there are innumerable neutral gravity zones all over the place. I see it all the time: even between Zeus and the ants. And there also is a very powerful and extensive one between Earth and the Moon: and the Moon does not affect the Earth's tides. Not an army of ants either."

"Marvelous, right on" said Newton. "With wonder the student of nature regards the microscopic molecule of nervous substance which is the seat of the hurried and laborious soul of the ant." Then Newton asked the leprechaun, "what do you call a one hundred year old ant"?

"I don't know" he says.

"An antique".

Only the bartender laughed, but the leprechaun thought about it and said, "well, as old as that joke may be, gravity's not universal and not necessarily mutual by degrees of the inverse squared. The Moon goes around the Earth for its own reasons. It's nothing to do with Earth's gravity. The gods to each assign a differing lot: some enter at the portal. Some do not."(2)

Part II Horologium
 
 
The next day Newton was visiting the mall, looking at expensive watches in a little jewelry store across from the food court. The leprechaun from the day before happened to be nearby, making the rounds of the food court, tasting free samples from the restaurant vendors, when he spyed Sir Isaac through the Rolex glass.
 
A later while he was biding his time with a medium Orange Julius by the "Crepes Shack", smoking an electronic cigarette, with nothing much else to do, when Newton absent mindedly wandered his way. 
 
When Newton spotted him, almost walking into him, the leprechaun asked "did you see anything you liked?"
 
"Oh, yes. A great selection", answered Newton, "fine watches."
 
 
"Like time and space, you know, mechanical clocks are in motion in stereo, and illustrate that rational categories and details of motion sort themselves out according to simplicity and kind."
 
"Oh, no", clucked Newton, "is this another joke"?
 
Bowing slightly, the curious elf of diminution showed him his "Quinotaur" style sport watch. "Check it out", he said, smiling then winking. "This baby's atomic. It's from over the rainbow." 
 
"Well prized, I'm sure" said Newton. 
 
"Look at the three hands of a ticking clock. When the hands of the clock go 'round, and the clock strikes one, 30” is 30”. 30” is 30” wherever any one goes, of course, and at that time the three hands of the clock will always look the same: a universal sign that it's one."
 
"Indeed, it is 1 o'clock", said Newton, looking at the leprechaun's watch and then the big mall clock, high over the food court.
 
"When the hands have gone 'round more, as time slips by, and the clock strikes nine, 90” is 90”, and the three hands of the clock at that hour always look the same ... 90 degrees, and it must be nine or three."
 
Newton looked at him, then answered, "y-e-s" with a sigh, and asked "what do you want", without really noticing what he had said.
 
"People see that ticking clocks of whatever size show the same time in hours, minutes, and seconds of degree, when synchronized within the same time zone, because of the universal nature of the signs, and the universal qualities of motion. From one clock to another, from biggest to smallest, even with most extreme differences in radius, each kind of hand ... minute, seconds, or hour ... turns in the type and quality of its motion, all the way around, all along its length. They tick off their motive ranks in a uniform way, conforming to the origin and category, because motion is not only a dream but an ontological character of things that are specifically real.
 
From the universal nature in time of these marks of motion, all clocks of whatever size show the same range of movements within their different kinds across all magnitudes.
 
Thus, we see powers of similarity and likeness are in the aspects and properties first, not only the size. 'Qualitas refert potius quam quantitas'.(3) It's the same with the cosmos: quality before quantity."
 
"Ha, old arguments from stone age Greece to fool me for a lecture about geometry and the cosmos"? asked Newton. 
 
 
"Only in a small way, not to grieve you. For example, there's a golf instructor who's obsessed with clocks. He uses them as images to illustrate points about the golf swing."
 
He made an imaginary pitch shot at the Mall clock, and watched it go like a pro. It looked like it hit the clock then disappeared.
 
"He says things like, 'if a leprechaun or a giant, or one of the little borrowers out the kitchen cabinets hits a hook, it's all the same: a matter of bad timing and wrong alignment ... over the top. Over the top's over the top, and for the reverse pivot and worst things I've seen, gravity's never an excuse.' "
 
"Not golf, please. No, no. A good walk spoiled in more ways than one. Have you read again my book, 'The Principia', and still not grasped the science of gravity?"
 
 
"Once of that was enough for me, and occult action-at-a-distance is no proper radial force. A slingshot is no fair comparison with the motions of the moon and the heavens around the earth. 'Gravity', as you call it, simply cannot explain celestial rotations.
 
As there's no rotary connection up there from here, as above, so below, strictly by lines of comparison. There's poetry of the stars, by math and direction, but celestial motions in their spheres are of another order and separate from pedestrian."
 
The dust in his old work boot strings seemed to come alive for a moment as he moved his feet. "I've seen the ends of many rainbows, and it's a different sort of walk there from here. Those places are beyond such mechanistic links as mortal ropes and knots, and whatever string theories, pulleys, or push carts Copernican gravitation has been able to devise."
 
"Have I gone too far then, outside of my sphere? According to one such as you? Maybe for you, but not for me: cf. Galileo and Kepler. cf. Please do. We are what we pretend to be. As what we are we pretend."
 
Newton laughed then for a moment began to sing a pop song. He enjoyed singing, and gestured an arm to the sky. "Mm, I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. If I can see it, then I can do it. If I just spread my wings, I can fly. Hmm, mm, fly high away, like a robin up into the sky."
 
"Well", piped the leprechaun, "maybe the apple did not hit you on the head hard enough? You confuse separate species of motion."
 
Newton continued to sing, "I think about it every night and day. Spread my wings and fly away. Ooh, I can fly. Hmm, fly, fly, fly."
 
Then he spoke to the little man in green. "Vade ad formicam. As you go, even in your kind, you may still be the half-wit end of it. You should read my book again, until you better understand it. Maybe hire a tutor from NASA? You know they say they've landed on the Moon and Mars, and fly by Pluto, and they always bring me."
 
 
Looking at him dryly, the leprechaun said, "when a radial velocity or rotary motion's of unitary and conformable origin, it's whatever speed, radius-cubitus, fast, slow, or medium, all at once, per instance along the radius. And radial velocity between a wheel and sphere's forever a distinction without a difference.
 
The world of clocks and gears, wheels of motion, adds constantly to the proof that motion's real, a specific quality: a genus en realis, distributed in many simple kinds: from slowest to medium to fastest. The typology of its kinds is a range full of detectable aspects and detectability -- fundamentally contradicting Galileo, and the sophomoric idea of undetectable or so-called unaccelerated rotation of the Earth."
 
The sunlight was shining through clouds, in the windowed ceiling of the gallery. Newton looked down at him closely, and said, "you know, this is not the end of the rainbow, this is the Mall, and I do not have all day for idle conversation with a leprechaun."
 
"Yet it's only a moment and a little time for a man who can fly. A clock the size of Texas, and another the size of Liechtenstein, and a third the size of a little child’s hand all work at the same rates. No matter the size, stopped clocks always have the right time at least two times a day, worldwide.
 
And like the celestial degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc around the world, and out into space, the hours, minutes, and seconds of clocks on the wall are in stereo."
 
Newton scratched his head. He rubbed his chin and pulled his ear twice. "Could I be hallucinating"? he wondered, then looking at his hands. "Is this an apparition from too much mercury"? He thought he heard another voice say, "quam quod ridiculus hic esse," and looking around to see from where, saw only the leprechaun.
 
"Am I hearing things?" he asked aloud.
 
"In stereo not meaning loud or anything to do with HBO, but from the Greek 'stereos', meaning 'solid' or 'complete', which means this is not an illusion. It's real and in common."
 
"You ponied sprite. You're an apparition of madness."
 
"No, of course not" answered the leprechaun, smiling and winking up at him in his eldritch way. "Aeque pars ligni curvi ac recti valet igni."
 
"Allumez le feu", retorted Newton. "Even dwarfs and the inane started small."
 
"Sometimes if there arises a feeling of angst, or chemical perdition," continued the leprechaun, "from alchemy or boredom or the strangeness of secret society evolution, it's a haunting not just for you. See these people", he said, pointing to the crowd with a nod. "Many here are as lost at the food court as they are on TV: most of them anyway, high handicappers, even a mumbling roar against reality."
 
He bowed the head and took off his hat. "Pauper sum", he declared, hat over heart, tiny bells ringing. "Pateor, fateor, quod Dii dant fero(4), but our conversation is not a psychosis from alchemy, or your poison mercury. Not even if you smoked a Rubik's cube.
 
As you know, the math of the cosmos is logical and universal, not from a priority of size and quantity over quality. Even 'in the embers of all things their primordial form exists'.
 
Not from the hugeness of big numbers is it that anything categorical makes sense, for logic is essential in the qualities and points. The elements from the beginning, before multiplication in properties and relations, and the essence of good sense, therefore, are at work in the quality over the quantity. The incredible hugeness of big numbers doesn't make anything logical or valid in truth. 
 
For instance, for science, the first what of the sun is not how big it is, but the most simple and essential operation: where and the way it's going around the Earth every day. If it were twice the size, and doing the same, it would still be orbiting the Earth."
 
"Delightfully appropriate for all, one size fits all then" laughed Newton uncomfortably. "Sunny days as well as money for all gifts. The sun. The sun. O the sun."
 
"If there's a reason for understanding cosmology, and the actual nature of time and space," countered the Leprechaun, "it's not from a priority of incredible size and gigantic numbers, spread over vast distances, but the priority of understanding angles and aspects objectively, like essential properties of parallel and actual perspective. The cosmos is not a blob or a heap. No, no. Not so, more like a diamond." 
 
Newton became distracted, if for a spell, if it seemed strange that sometimes there appeared sparkles reflected in his beard. Eyeing the peculiar little crystallized lights, he said, "that could be, like diamonds in the rough, as you live in your own little world, if science were easy elvish lectures for free."
 
He felt suddenly like a karaoke freestyle but was almost too loud, "O the merrry money metals and carbon like ice. Kaleidoscope weather's so nice, or whatever it was. Hooly Boo incantations" he concluded. "Are those diamonds in your beard"?
 
 
"Numbers themselves represent not only quantity but quality, and are finite, of course. As much as the way we know the names and values, if one said, they 'are the universal language offered by the Deity to humans', maybe so, and they count with location -- from place and time, to place and time, and as many places and times as there are, no congregation of fools adds into infinity.
 
That way the cosmos is finite too. The cosmos is spherical, let me say, and the cosmos is the cosmos in one total by all parts, being the only one that it is in complete occurrence. Such a thing can only be subsumed in time one unique number and very long arrow code at a time. For a given hour and day, as all the while goes by, the Earth is a universal atomic clock in the middle of all that code.
 
And natural motion cannot take place in an instant, but an aspect represented in time is formally universal, and can characterize motion as closely to an instant as possible. If someone said he had the fastest fastest arrow, with which he could tell the passing universal atomic clock time of Earth, and of the cosmos, in half a half a half a second sooner than the best available time up 'til then, in the fastest fraction of a second, it could be possible. But if he got better and better at it, whittling the half a half a half a seconds down to quarter seconds of those, and then littler and littler fractions of a moment, he would very soon be left with only another instance of an aspect of the clock on the wall.
 
 
That's what's happening with nanoseconds, one billionth of a second, like 10 to negative 9; and attoseconds, one billionth of a billionth of a second, like 10 to negative 18.
 
The greatest efficiencies of speedy divison always end in another boundary set from the formal circle of degrees. From any clock, and from the days under the Heavens in motion up above, nanoseconds increased by nanoseconds end in an aspect, and a degree, bounded out of one of 360 in 3-D. That's only what they're aiming at to begin with.
 
In other words, there's a permanent sort of mathematical density hidden within logic, even in the sublime, such that there's always already a type of situation density in the aspects or motions, and of any figures within a circle.
 
And everything can fit into a circle. As much as anything, the Germans would call it necessity. One said, 'we must admit that there is a kind of circle from which it seems there is no escape'."(5) 
 
 
"What odd vanity this is becoming. This is insane. People will think I'm crazy! It must be the mercury," Newton replied, looking again at his hands.
 
"A divine proportion comes from three," said the elf, "and there must be a center, as much as there must be one in the middle. Every aspect has its angle, with axis and center; and as every to all, and all to one, all things must have a center, even the extremes, since the center must exist".
 
He skipped a jig and made a corny magic throw for lucky charms. His hands made the splash. "Throw a stone into a river, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.(6) Domus parva quies magna. That way," he said, spreading his hands away in even calm planes, then back in circles. He could have been waxing the hood of a car. "Domus parva quies magna."
 
 
"We should prefer things in measure to things in excess, but how have I seen you twice in these two days?"
 
"There's no reason to feel strange about that. Mere coincidence, with a little curiosity. It follows us both, of course, and others almost everywhere. There must be ontology, and predicables."
 
"Predicables."
 
"Predicables."
 
"What's your name then"? asked Newton.
 
"Empidonax".
 
"Empidonax, I'd have thought more like Elvis. Are you not following me?"
 
"Don't be paranoid. What plays in Vegas, stays in Vegas, but if you're lost, this is to say, that like an elephant in a bird cage, the size of the cosmos does not have priority over the quality of its aspects, and three prime aspects of its character overall are 1.) the Earth's not moving 2.) the natural order of the universe is finite 3.) the earth's the only one in every constellation of the ecliptic and in between all the stars and ends of the Heavens all the time."
 
Newton thought he had déjà vu and could see through the windows and walls at Graceland. "Have I not seen you before?" he asked.
 
 
"Who would remember?" he said, and "how does anybody say that the cosmos is bigger than the elements, and that the elements in their turn are huge? Atoms are gigantic? They are not. Atoms are so tiny. They're miniscule as the littlest math particles.
 
How could anybody say that the cosmos is bigger than the table of elements? The cosmos is not bigger than the elements of which it's composed. The entire wheel of the cosmos is inescapably elemental, and how could the cosmos ever have extension beyond the elements, that are the very aspects of its code?
 
How would anybody say that the elements are the elements according to anything other than their type and quality? Yet who would imagine that the elements in total extension are not as big for a sum as the cosmos?
 
Therefore, the property of the cosmos is essentially small. In fact, about 95% less than Copernicanism. As finite for distinctions as a mustard seed, its priority has already been set in the seal of it, the point not the size. It's in the quality, shape, and proportion over quantity. After all, it's only composed of elements, and the elements are not big." 
 
"Yet sometimes they may be strained to the ends", said Newton. "If you and the elements could buy a kingdom only for a shetland pony, not a horse, how wonderful it would be. Eldritch-of-the-Way, that would be perfect for you."
 
 
"Yes, small favors hear me roar". There was an almost bizarre growl that emanated from his throat.
 
"You haven't lost your pot of gold from too much rambling philosophy have you?" Newton asked.
 
"No, accidents and ways home are many, but it should be just where I left it, so far away, in another place. Nobody from NASA will find it there."
 
Newton looked away and cupped his ear. "Do I hear the bleating idiot as the little voice of many waters in the fountain at the mall?"
 
The leprechaun could not help grinning, "and would it be that gold is gold, only when more than a particle? Any aspect, however vanishing, in gold is gold, even if totally only by the slightest modicum.
 
A collection of aspects in a diamond are the same no matter the size, and the mathematical and logical priority of the cosmos is not in size, but in quality of value. As they say over the rainbow at Christmas, a dodecahedron the size of Texas is a dodecahedron, as well as another the size of a sand pebble.
 
The gods used it to arrange the constellations of the Heavens, and a given type of angle's the same angle in space for a point, no matter the extension. A given type of figure's the same detail of proportions, no matter the scale for the specific combination. The combination to a code's the same, no matter size or concealment: like a crystal seal of aspects." 
 
"Now I can see that once upon a time you must have been a redundant toy shop engineer, then downsized by the markets, yet the secrets of models and scales would go with you still."
 
"Maybe that was it, close enough for government work, but Season's Greetings".
 
"Scala Leprechaunorum and long lines at the post office over the holidays, with you the picture of a stamp. Splendid dreams to see how you survive at the mall, and every Christmas."
 
 
 
Even though there was nothing that funny, other than a strange feeling of confusion, Newton laughed himself out of his mind, oddly, for a moment, and stumbled back into the "Crepes Shack" cart. He thought he heard a cell phone ringing, not his.
 
"Pigmy Sprite, it must be your phone, who's calling now?"
 
"That's not my phone" said the leprechaun, "but don't knock the cart over. And you know what they say about furniture?" he asked.
 
"What"? managed Newton, who seemed to have lost his teeth.
 
"That no matter how big and expensive it gets, or small the people who use it, it's all always for situations only in 3-D."
 
 
"The midget of letters with keys to the abyss and a lost chair of philosophy. Where did you go to school, illiterate Ireland in the middle ages? All this to tell me Aristotle would be a father to leprechauns, and the sun orbits the earth?
 
When will ye go back to your little desk at the North pole"?
 
The leprechaun looked wryly amused, and it was almost a shock to see at such a point of discussion the way that he gave Sir Isaac the straight-up middle finger, the bird all the way from Saturn, and the Oakland Raiders. But there it was for a moment, as though a doctor could prick it to draw blood.
 
"The Saturn finger", he intoned, "a sign of restrictions, also ease of aboriginal government, as you know from chiromancy and the arcane arts."
 
"Oh, pleasant", said Newton.
 
"If the C.I.A. could put the genetic code to Johnny Cash's in a tiny quasi-invisible pin, there it is; and each of the five Platonic solids is the same identical pattern, one to one, no matter the size, and the same with the cosmos."
 
"Whose madness for such crackers"? exclaimed Newton. 
 
"They say all's well that ends well, but heliocentrism's totally out of proportion, as much as most to least, and vice versa. Mixed up so bad out of sorts, it's off the chain insane in the membrane."
 
"You rude little man", said Newton.
 
"The web of life's a mingled yarn, good and ill together, but it would be very bad luck indeed, and impossible for geometry, for the bedevilment of all of it, if the earth were revolving to orbit the sun."
 
Newton looked about to find again his sense of atmosphere, then concluded his way with examined composure. "If I should suffer more from imagination than reality, that's still been enough with due measure from you, now good day."