Essay on Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1803-1882

Page 176

natura naturans vs. natura naturata

In Aristotelian terms natura naturans would be form and activity, and natura naturata would be matter. These terms were probably first used by Averroës, the Arabian commentator on Aristotle; later, Nicolas Cusanus, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza employed the same distinction. Natura naturata, or nature passive, is used by pantheistic philosophers to distinguish the universe in its ultimate, unitary significance from the universe as aggregate of objects.

Inorganic corporate slave

I

I’m a techie, a linguist, a Guru, a geek,

I’m an inorganic corporate slave,

From Sanskrit to Latin from Urdu to Greek,

I’ll talk to you on every plane.

                        II

I’m a virus, a Trojan, a drone and a freak,

I’m online, I’m offline,

I post once a week,

I’m everything you ever craved.

                        III

I’m an avatar inside you,

I’m inside your head,

On the plane of reality,

I’m willing to transmit.

                       IV

I’m neural, I’m viral, I’m visceral, I’m sleek,

I’m a voice on the cosmic waves,

I’m a signal from heaven,

I’m a roar from the deep.

I’m a blip on your hyper plane.

                       V

I’m an algorithm, your customer,

Your master, your drone,

I provide you everything you need,

From service, to feedback,

From data to tweets,

I encourage your compliance,

To stay on the trajectory of growth.

Written by Martin Forrestal, July 2013

Notes from the poems of Mandelstam

Konstantin Nikolaevich Batyushkov (1787 – 1855), a contemporary of Pushkin, was one of the greatest of Russian poets. ‘The Dying Tasso’ is among his best-known poems.

Essay on Experience by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published 1803-1882

Page 74

The consciousness in each man is a sliding scale, which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of his body; life above life, in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dignity of any deed, and the question ever is, not what you have done or forborne, but at whose command you have done or forborne it.

Fortune, Minerva, Muse, Holy Ghost, — these are quaint names, too narrow to cover this unbounded substance. The baffled intellect must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named, — ineffable cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water, Anaximenes by air, Anaxagoras by (Noûs) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love; and the metaphor of each has become a national religion.

Aristotle on the Heavens

Aristotle on the Heavens

VI

Books IX 25 - 71 & X

XXV

There cannot be more than one world. Since the existence of a world implies the existence of a transcendent being to move it, a plurality of worlds would entail a plurality of transcendent movers, which is an impossibility.

Page 2

Body is defined as a species of the continuous.

Page 24

According to Simplicius, it was believed that the astronomical records of the Egyptians went back for 630,000 years, and those of the Babylonians for 1,440,000.

In Chapter VII Aristotle argues that the body of the world in not infinite.
In Chapter VIII he argues that there cannot be more than one world.
He says that a thing that did not move would not be a body at all. πâѵ σŵμα αίσθητòѵ ëχϵι ...

Page 78
The elements move more quickly as they approach their natural places.

Page 87
ouranos : is world, heavens or sky.

Page 93
aeon is the total time which circumscribes the length of life of every creature, and which cannot in nature be exceeded.

Ch. XII, Page 127

The impossibility of anything that was once eternal afterwards being destroyed, or anything once non-existent afterwards being eternal, may also be seen from less general and more scientific arguments. Things which are destructible or generated are all subject to change. Change takes place by means of contraries, and physical bodies are destroyed by the agency of the same elements of which they are composed.

Ch. VII, page 180

The notion was widely held in antiquity that bodies moving through air became heated by it.
Cf. Lucretius vi. 178: plumbea vero glans etiam longo cursu volvenda liquescit.
(A leaden ball in whirling through a long course even melts)

Ch IV, Page 293

As the triangle is the elementary plane figure to which all plane figures can be reduced, so the pyramid is the elementary solid.

Ch V, Page 303

The elements, then, are neither infinite in number nor reducible to one, and must therefore be (a) a plurality but (b) a limited number.

Extract from The Bhagavad-Gita translated by Barbara Stoler Miller (Bantam Books, 1986)

‘ You grieve for those beyond grief,

And you speak of words of insight;

But learned man do not grieve

For the dead or the living.

Never have I not existed

Nor you, nor these kings;

And never in the future

Shall we cease to exist.

Just as the embodied self

Enters childhood, youth, and old age,

So does it enter another body;

This does not confound a steadfast man.

Contacts with matter make us feel

Heat and cold, pleasure and pain.

Arjuna, you must learn to endure

Fleeting things – they come and go !

When these cannot torment a man,

When suffering and joy are equal

For him and he has courage,

He is fit for immortality.

Nothing of nonbeing comes to be,

Nor does being cease to exit;

The boundary between these two

Is seen by men who see reality.

Indestructible is the presence

That pervades all things;

No one can destroy

This unchanging reality…’

Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics - The set of numerals

Notes from the book

Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics

Winfred P. Lehmann

Publish by Ruthledge, 1993

Notes on the numerals 1 to 10 in Indo-European languages

The set of numerals

P253

Numeral systems in general are constructed around some selected standard, often that of the digits of one hand or both. The Sumerian system is constructed on the set of fingers for one hand; 6 is 5 + 1, 7 is 5 + 2, and so on to ten, which is an independent lexical item, as are the numbers 1-5. The Indo-European system is also based on the digits of one hand (Greek pénte ”five” – Hittite pankus “the whole”), but differs from Sumerian in having independent lexical items for 6, 7, 9, and probably 8 as well, although the suggestion has been made that the word for eight is a dual of the etymon of Avestan ašti- “four fingers” that was selected to represent the numeral (Henning 1948: 699).

After 10, differences are found from dialext group to dialect group. Gernaic and Baltic represent 11 and 12 as “one left over” and “two left over”, Latin and Greek as 1-10, 2-10, but from 13 the Greek form is “three and ten”, etc.; moreover, Latin represents 18 and 19 as “two from twenty, one from twentty”. More such forms that are restricted to one dialect or one dialect ggroup could be cited.

The numerals from 20 to 100 show further differences. For our purposes those numerals may be adequately represented by giving side by side representations for 20, 40, 60, 80, 100.

Numbers	Sanskrit	Greek	Latin	Gothic
20	viṃśatí	eikosi	vīgintī	twai tigjus
40	catvāriṁśát	tetterákonta	quadrāgintā	fidwor tigjus
60	ṣaṣtí	heksékonta	sexāgintā	saihs tigjus
80	aśītí	ogdoékonta	octōgintā	ahtautehund
100	śatá	hekatón	centum	hunda

P254

Treatment of the system of the lower numerals has yielded explanations for those to 5. Proto-Indo-European *oinos has long been explained as based on the root ^?ey- “this one”. I have proposed that the word for two is based on the root *dew- “further”, as in Hittite tuwa “distant”. Moreover, that the word for three is based on the root *ter- “even further”, as in Sanskrit tiráh (1990a: 40). We may recall that Greek énē “the third day” is in origin “that (day)” (Specht 1944: 16). And if the Hittite meywes is a reflex of the Proto-Indo-European word, an additional numeral has been explained (Neu 1987: 176-7); based on the root *mey- “lessen”, the word for 4 would represent the lesser hand of four fingers, in contrast with 5 for the whole hand. The initial system would then have been based on pointing to objects – first as closest at hand, second as farther from the speaker, the third even farther, while the words for 4 and 5 represent symbolizations with four and five fingers.

The most convincing explanation for the words for 6 to 9 is by means of borrowing or calques, although the word for 9 may be related to the root *new- as in Latin novus “new”.

German technical terminology

Stopfbuchsbrille (German) gland follower, follower, gland flange