C-165. The Frankenstein back story: the ascent of Arrange

Frankenstein, the fictional scientist, attempted to bring life to a corpus, what would have been an historic event (yes, redundancy there – but intentional), by assaulting the assembled corpus with a contrived lightning bolt. Not unlike what a heavenly lightning bolt might do to spark (an event itself) a forest fire (another event).

His feat would be a case of compositional change rather than one of merely circumstantial change (II). Of the conditions attending any collision, before and after, arrange would stand out. Not the entities colliding, not the consequences of the collision on these entities, not the general persisting conditions, GPC, of the Nature of Things (III: partial order, consequentiality and [entity] discontinuity [aka separateness]) … but the Course (C-139) of the entities before the collision.

Arrange: That portion of the total picture of collision qua event which has become itself a signal event in CEM-history (App. XI), most notably in recent human history with the increase in anthropogenic events – i.e., compositional change. The (burgeoning) emergence of emergence, so to speak. The Expansion (C-163).

Frankenstein arranged not just the corpus. He arranged the lightning too. What of lightning’s history … and the Frankenstein back story, of what gave Frankenstein the idea?

The heaven’s lightning is itself a collision event, of entities “rubbing” together in their courses. And a coming together of two aspects of functionality: 1/ of the needed functionality re entity Course consequent on the Nature of Things’ GPC (III; C-144) – i.e., incomplete instruction*; and 2/ of the functionality inherent in the colliding entities (as in “structure = function”).

Why this inquiry? Because of the question of “origin” (C-160). Given these two aspects of functionality, what sequence of “rubbing” – rather than more destructive collision events – played a part in the history of the human condition … and the history of other (“biological”) species? Can we (arrange to) rub each other in the future so as to attain the Union (C-112) we need to improve our quality of life?

Arrange as needed functionality (too) calls our attention (C-110) to matters of Course, to giving steps their due now (III: “Life: the double crystal”) in addition to appreciation of their antecedent events’ place in the history of behavior and the genesis of behaviors.

Were there and/or will there be more than one triggering events that qualify to be addressed as origins? Aren’t there a lot of them in our lives? Shouldn’t getting ourselves turned around and on course via accord with CEM-history’s Course be such an origin?

* See C-115 for the accelerant feature of needed and available functionality acting together in the interdependency () mode.

(c) 2016 R. F. Carter
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