Category: Re:Creation

Peirce observes that ‘one of the main purposes of studying history ought to be to free us from the tyranny of our preconceived notions’ (EP2:114). The same goes for the study of scriptures; the purpose of revelation and discovery alike is to free us from confinement in a cognitive bubble. Turning symbols can liberate us in this way, but only if we can free ourselves from our preconceived notions of their value and authority, and give due respect to artistic and cultural creativity. Continue reading Inner authority

The poet and the prophet shake your language loose from your habits.

Following up on the explanation of the interpretant given in his 1909 letter to William James, Peirce is careful to distinguish between the two kinds of prior knowledge needed by the interpreter: knowledge of the sign’s object, and knowledge of the sign-system. Continue reading Driven to presume

Pragmatism as a theory of meaning implies that texts, words and other symbols are consecrated by our use of them; the Holy Bible is Holy to those who read it as sacred story or divine guidance, and cannot be holy without those readers who live by its light. Continue reading Sacred play

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the living creatures that He has scattered through them: and He has power to gather them together when He wills.

— Qur’án 42.29 (Yusuf Ali)

To ‘gather them together’ is to un-differentiate them, i.e. to uncreate them. On the other hand, the scattering is only through physical spacetime. In eternal meaning space, the myriad beings together now constitute the Living One, the buddha-nature, the Universe of Firstness. And since the world is inside out, each individual is a recreation of that singularity. ‘The entire universe suffers the pangs of a new creation in and through a person’s existence’ (Kim 1975, 172, after Dogen).

You can’t create and evaluate at the same time. Even in Genesis, evaluation comes after creation.

And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:25

Continue reading Creation and selection

Chapter 11 of Turning Signs introduced Robert Ulanowicz’s theory about the ascendency of ecosystems and the importance of overhead (inefficiencies) in the system’s response to stress. This is a clue to the nature of creativity. Continue reading Creative misconceptions

Rainer Maria Rilke tells us that a good poem can only emerge from a lifetime of experiences, which are not only remembered but, you might say, inhabited. (Or you might say that they inhabit you.) Continue reading Creativity and karma

Polyversity provides that a word can be taken in various ‘senses.’ In the context of the previous sentence, the word ‘sense’ means something different from what it means when we speak of ‘sense experience.’ Yet there is a connection linking the various senses of sense, as a study of the history of the word will show. Continue reading Imagine

Every convention was once an invention – though probably not by an inventor conscious of being one.