Paul Hurt's linkage site: home page

The study of linkages is one of the broadest of all studies. I discuss linkages in many different fields and create completely new ones: a prominent theme is innovation. There are many innovations here, some of them practical, in Web design and gardening. The ones in Web design give new ways of navigating pages, which can be used in the long pages common in Websites but also in 'Large Page Design.' (See Page travel.) For gardening, Photographs 1 and Photographs 2 give an overview.

Other innovations concern poetry: for example in concrete poetry (the page includes an 'exploding poem'), study of metaphor and metre, and in a form which uses linkage by meaning to complement linkage by sound. My poems cover a wide range, including humour and sarcasm, war, child labour, nature and troubled relationships.

Many linkages are very problematic and disputed, for example the linkage between mind and body (in dualist views), and between mathematics and science. Astrologers find a linkage between human personality and celestial objects whilst sceptics find no convincing evidence. Scientific advances involve new linkages: Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation established a linkage between all the bodies in the Universe, Darwin's Theory of Evolution proposed linkages between organisms.

The General Glossary explains many of the ideas used. About this site gives background information. Most of the material is non-technical. The page introducing {theme} theory (which includes linkage and contrast) is an exception, in part. I explain some of my conceptual innovations and I develop a symbolic notation. Some pages, such as interpretations, make use of this notation. Most of the interpretations concern mathematics, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Although the pages of the site (over 70 of them) are very varied in subject and tone, {themes}, such as linkage and contrast, provide a strong organizing principle, whether or not {themes} are cited explicitly.

I emphasize words and concepts much more than images. Even so, there are many photographs and other images and I provide an Images Map to supplement the Site Map and the alphabetical list on the right.

The section 'Controversies' includes polemical discussion of bullfighting, animal welfare and activism, the death penalty, green ideology, feminist ideology, the culture industry (including criticism of the BBC), Ireland and Northern Ireland and boycotts directed against Israel. This section also contains a collection of my aphorisms and a discussion of aphoristic form.

Linkage and contrast provide a powerful way of viewing human personality in its frequent mixture of strength and weakness and the often grotesque contradictions to be found in societies and give new perspectives in ethics and politics.

The drama section illustrates this distinctive viewpoint. It includes the scripts of two plays, an introduction with photographs to one of them and a screenplay 'treatment' (mainly comic) also with photographs.