Hot Rod Biology

This was the beginning of what came to be called 'Natural History'. He is said to have made Order from Chaos! "In Natural History things are extracted from the world and redeployed into a new knowledge formation whose value lies precisely in it's difference from the chaotic orginal" [from Mary Louise Pratt's "Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation].

He also proposed systems of classification to give order to minerals and animals [later including Homo Sapiens in this category]. Notions of standardisation, systemisation, and classification were obviously hugely popular in western European thought of the eighteenth century ñ the Enlightenment, and seem to have been pervasive since . . .

This reading has drawn a few parallels with the Downton book, and a Feyerabend one I've been [attempting!] reading 'The End of Reason' ñ tracing our interests in objectivity, order, and 'science'.

Downton actually says "pattern is pervasive" and that Bateson argues that it underlies all connections in the world [this is why taxonomy works, and is also, I think you could say, pervasive].

What if this is not so?

All patterns must exist in a state of hybridity. The pattern must evolve or die/dissapate . . . so no pattern is universal or timeless . . .

HYBRIDITY IS PERVASIVE

Obviously our ability to see PATTERN and thus to CLASSIFY and PREDICT, has been instrumental to our so called "progress" [and yes I'm writing this on a computer, I know], but could our reliance on this one form of knowing be impeding our progress in other ways?

I'm certainly not trying to get all new-agey here!? But what if we simply cannot NOT see pattern? Our brains will "make sense" of things they don't understand . . . where am I going with this?

To bed.

As a special treat for those of you who've read this far I'll tell you what I did today . . . I photographed Anna [my girlfriend] wearing different bikinis, holding some of my favourite records, wearing an Elvis mask . . . Yeah!