Space-Time and Perceptible Space

The idea that space, like mass can change its "formlessness" poses a problem. That space is manipulated by gravity and is not separable from the idea of time cannot help but alter our understanding, our conceptualization of immediate, perceptible space around us.  However, because gravitational spatial distortion or multiple Riemannian spatial dimensions are not experienced first hand or at least perceptible without scientific aids, the idea of a space-thing which can be folded or compressed remains an abstract rational construction.  How this will change man's perception of the sun, the seasons or distance is unclear.

Cosmologies

Image from: http://www.physics.miami.edu/huerta/class/mls603

For centuries after Copurnicus developed the sun centered cosmology (as opposed to the Aristotlian earth centered one) scientists could not prove that it existed as such but instead had to 'believe' it. First, the idea was for all practical purposes immeasurable in 1543. The tools simply didn't exist to prove it one correct. Second, it more than clashed with the existing idea of the universe- it negated it. Everything that was known about the world up to that time reinforced the earth-centered universe. Finally, Copurnicus had most of the science wrong. Slowly, first Galileo then Kepler, the science was massaged and corrected.

Scientists and philosophers following Copurnicus, first had to believe it was correct, before they could even prove it; today our cosmologies are not that different. Much of what we believe about the universe we can not prove and the corresponding conceptions (then there are multiple cosmologies) of world over-reaches our science. Because no one single theory summarizes the universe into one singular idea, the elastic "Big Theory - relativism - Big Theory" revolution is in mid cycle.  Many relativistic, small theories, solve localized problems. The question on which one to believe is not less of a problem now then it was in 1543.

Before-After

Wittgenstein tell us that a word's meaning is NOT derived from its letters, nor connected to some object that it might signify. Some words obviously do not have "things" which they are directly connected to, such as very, there or this, while some words stand for different things at different times, such as the word "bad", or "fat" or numbers. Instead, words are connected to meaning by the structure they exist in and not by some property intrinsic to the word itself. Furthermore, words do not exist as a creation, or an idea within the speaker. I think "dog" when I say dog, so "dog" means dog. This too is incorrect, because a word's meaning is only valid within a system, and just because I want "dog" to mean dog and not cat, I have either to operate within a language system, or change the system enough that it adapts to the new meaning placed upon within it. Furthermore, a particular definition may work with one set of users but not for the entire set; there may be multiple language systems at play. Therefore, a definition of a word is never fixed and cannot be limited or solidified. Instead a true definition is only the field of possible definitions within a system. Some being more useful within the larger system than others.

Accordingly a "theory" of language, much like a rigid definition, is useless in explaining language's terms and concepts because it is a prescription, a predetermination of the future. However, Wittgenstein reminds us that in language, like in chess, the act itself is not important but what happens before and after that is.

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The Brick Wall

If we make the loose analogy that the act of building is similar to language, we quickly turn to comparing building components, the brick, wall ties, flashing, walls, etc to grammar and syntax. To extend this further, we could paraphrase a Wittgensteinian question: "What would the brick wall be, without the wall?" Is it just a brick? or is there something between the brick and the wall that changes it, and like a 'wink' with multiple possible meanings, transforms the combination in context into something else.

Definitions and Experience

Intuition tells us that culturally we develop new words when there is a need for expression. But linguistics and ethnography shows us that we "express" ideas in more ways than just using nouns. As human beings, we communicate feelings and ideas in a number of ways, using an infinitely complex system of grammar, syntax, inflection, body language, context etc. Put another way, a culture doesn't need a specific word to express an idea or feeling, it can express it in other ways. Conversely, just because someone else uses the same actual word, such as "house" it doesn't mean it represents the same idea or feeling for everyone. In fact despite what Aristotle thought about the solidity of writing, words rarely mean the same thing to different individuals even within a culture.

Creating versus Making

Collingwood in his book "The Principals of Art" attacks the modern (circa 1933) concept of the artist as craftsman. The characteristics of craft he defines as:

1. Craft always involves a distinction between means and end, each clearly conceived as something distinct from the other


2. Craft involves a distinction between planning and execution


3. Means and ends are related in one way in the process of planning; in the opposite in the process of execution.


4. There is a distinction between raw material and finished product or artifact


5. There is a distinction between form and matter
   
6. There is a hierarchical relation between various crafts, on supplying what another needs, one using what another provides.
   

Through an analysis of the concept of craft and its related notion of technique, Collingwood calls into question the prevailing conceptual models based on economics (the specialized group of industries where the artist is the producer and audience is a consumer) or psychology (audience consists of persons reacting to certain stimuli provided by the artist) based conceptual models). These world views, which have craft as an underlying assumption, defines art as a made product, which is a finished, complete totality.

Art, Collingwood claims is not made, it is created and is an unrealized process which, through the imagination, must be re-created each time it in comes into being.

Parallel Objects

If form, to paraphrase Riegl, was the exterior expression of its internal structure, then who or what put that "will to form" in place? Is not the sub-structure of a work of art a subjective architecture built on the complex psycho-stylistic (style, used here in a morphological sense) process of personal and cultural contexts? To put it more bluntly, can form exist by itself? Is not form as much a product of the viewer as it is of the forms that surround it?