We’re all thinking about dots. Sheri reminds us that this is not a new conversation. Terry responds and starts teasing out the metaphor. Dots and lines, or overlapping circles? Maybe both, maybe more. We don’t have the words to represent to ourselves this complex conceptual scheme. (A recurring memory: in a philosophy of science lecture we are described as three dimensional slices of four dimensional space-time worms.)
Wendy sees pictures in poems. I see pictures in my head – pictures I can’t translate onto paper because they are too transient – shape shifting wisps of mental smoke that drift at the edge of my mind. Blobs of ink dropped into water – blending with others yet keeping their shape. I try to represent what I see, but I just make a mess.
We bounce ideas off each other and they ricochet off in unexpected tangents (Wendy, again). (Another memory from philosophy of science – Newton’s “billiard ball” theory of causation.) A wirearchy, not a hierarchy.
Seen from a distance the combination of six dots (or more) becomes a new dot in the universe.