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Separation of people: Shakespeare
Separation of people: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Commuters
Separation between past and present
Separation in vegetables and fruit
Human characteristics and lack of versatility
Separation techniques in Chemistry
Thermodynamic separation
{Separation} and sphere of application
Separability and separation
Ending life and saving life
the Demarcation between science and metaphysics
Causation
Technical comments
Separation of people: Shakespeare
The closing lines of 'Love's Labour Lost,' preceded by WINTER.
WINTER.
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of
Apollo. You that way: we this way.
Exeunt
Separation of people: Auschwitz-Birkenau
When the train came to a halt at Birkenau the people ordered to leave the train heard more shouting, the frenzied barking of dogs. It might be the middle of a night lit with floodlights and the flames from chimneys. They assembled on the selection ramp and walked or were carried up to Mengele, or whoever was on duty at that time of day or night. The man would order the children and some of the adults, all the older adults, to go that way, to the right, to the gas chamber. The others were ordered to go this way, to the left, to work.
Separation of people: commuters and others
My poem: Commuters
On the station platforms a passing train
hammers Wagnerian anvils in the brain
and with a flame-like Whoosh! is gone,
swallowed by the setting sun.
They look across at others much the same -
patient, stoical, quiet, much the same.
They do not return the look.
They return to newspaper, timetable or book.
Patiently, each one stands or sits,
waiting for a stopping train, not the next delivery to Auschwitz.
Separation between past and present
Snakes exist now as in the past, storms take place now as in the past, but the beginning of a poem of mine claims:
There are no longer serpents or tempests,
no longer blackguards or ne'er-do-wells.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." (The Go-Between - L P Hartley: 'The Go-Between.') Separation may be complete or incomplete. Separation between past and present is incomplete, past and present linked by memory and records.
Separation in vegetables and fruit
I first investigated a theme which can be applied so widely, applied to the unthinkable and the unbearable as well as to severely abstract matters such as the the demarcation between science and metaphysics, by considering an everyday matter, the characteristics of vegetables and fruits.
This is an incomplete list of the characteristics which a grower would consider when planting fruit and vegetables:
These characteristics show separation. A cultivar which has high yield may not have more than a mediocre taste (eg tomato cultivar 'Moneymaker' in the opinion of most commentators.) The characteristic high yield isn't linked with taste. Even when some of these characteristics are found together, they are unlinked. For example, the tomato cultivar 'Shirley' has generally high disease resistance and a high yield, but the the characteristics are separable.
Human characteristics and lack of versatility
As for the characteristics of vegetables and fruits, so for the characteristics of humans, except that separation isn't always found and linkage isn't absent quite so often.
Physical courage is separable from moral courage. This is another way of saying that courage has to be resolved. Courage isn't one thing, it has to be broken down. The humane sense which leads someone to adopt the vegan diet is separable from other aspects of the humane sense which the vegan may or may not possess - such as the humane feelings aroused by cruelty and injustice to humans. In other words, 'humane feelings' have to be resolved. Whatever the humane feelings of the vegan, these are separable from competence, which again is made up of many separable competences. These in turn are separable from the ability to be sarcastic where sarcasm is called for, or scepticism, where scepticism is called for ... but obviously, the separable characteristics form a very great number. In the page on eating, I criticize the vegan diet, and point out that a vegan may show very little awareness of all the other aspects of diet besides the one in which vegans tend to specialize: selected aspects of animal welfare. There seems to be a linkage between veganism and pacifism, the avoidance of violence, including the violence which can be justified, as in the case of a just war (the prime case being the war to defeat Hitler's regime, and as a result to end the selections at Birkenau.)
The fact that so many characteristics are separable, that they may very well not be linked, causes untold harm and difficulty. People with a particular strength as organizers may lack intuition and empathy, so that they alienate others. People with the boldness to start a new venture may shrink from some of the duties which are necessitated by the venture.
Untold harm and difficulty are caused too by the linkages between characteristics. People who are determined and stubborn, alienating other people who respect their determination but loathe their stubbornness, may find eventually that the loathing is stronger.
These are not new insights, of course. What is new is to apply the same organizing principle, the use of the theme {separation} to these important commonplaces of human nature and to other, at first sight completely dissimilar areas of experience, including:
Separation techniques in Chemistry
such as filtration, distillation and chromatography are homogeneous with (to use Kant's term in the Critique of Pure Reason), homoiolinked with (to use mine) the other instances of separation described here.
When a system is studied thermodynamically, there may be separation for the purposes of study between the system (eg an object at a higher temperature than its surroundings) and the rest of the universe.
{separation} and sphere of application
{Separation}, like other themes, has spheres of application. {/Framing} has {separation}. 'The Rhetoric of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork,' edited by Paul Duro, is an indispensable account of framing, although flawed, like so many other academic treatments, by a complete failure to evaluate. It discusses amongst other things the physical frames surrounding paintings but also with what can be called 'purely conceptual framing.' From the essay in this book by Wolfgang Ernst 'Framing the Fragment' (Page 121): 'To frame is to set something apart and designate it for attention.' In my terminology, the sphere of application of {framing} has both material applications and purely conceptual applications. The theme is pre-ordered and the sphere of application is post-ordered. These matters, then, are within the sphere of application of {ordering}.
My hope is that some practices which may seem embedded may be readily separable and may well achieve separation, and abolition. Such practices as bullfighting in Spain - as well as in the South of France and some Latin American countries. Is bullfighting inseparable from sun-baked landscapes, a more passionate way of living life than is common in England, linked with an appreciation of death as well as life, intensely lived? Not in the least, I hope. A spectacle which has no more justification for continuing today than the much worse spectacle of gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome - end it! Is capital punishment inseparable from the way of life of the American South, alien to chillier states such as Minnesota but rooted in hotter states such as Texas and Louisiana? The arguments against its use are equally applicable to all the states. Uproot it! End it! These traditions are not nearly as fixed and immutable as that. Destroy them!
One object may have dramatically different functions, but this is simply one instance to be compared with less dramatic instances I explore in other areas of the site, such as the use of text and images for more than one function in Web design, or the use of boards and other objects in the design of gardening and horticultural equipment. A rope may be used to end life, when placed around the neck. My opposition to the death penalty in almost all but not quite all cases has made this use a matter of prolonged and painful study. A rope may be used to save life, when a climber falls. The rope used to be placed around the waist, although for a long time the rope has been attached to a climbing harness instead. (A waist placed around the waist could save a falling climber but would hamper respiration and eventually kill the climber.) Separation of functions here shows very marked contrast. The poem is completely ambiguous. There's no indication of whether a hanging or the saving of a climber's life is described:
His sudden fall
transfixed them all,
as if they had fallen too,
or might fall next
into the darkness
near at hand
pierced by his single call.
Into the darkness
led the rope
that broke his fall,
and held.
The rope: halting falling's double check,
tied around either waist or neck.
The demarcation between science and metaphysics
Chapter 11 of Karl Popper's 'Conjectures and Refutations' has exactly that title. He begins with a statement which is surely beyond reproach: 'The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed...because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science.'
A redrawing of Popper's discussion would involve the replacement of 'demarcation' by 'separation.' 'Demarcation' is surely an instance of separation rather than a sub-theme of separation. ' The starting-point is the modification of Occam's razor I discuss in the section on causation. ' Linkages are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.' There is separation between science and metaphysics. Evidence and arguments are required to claim any linkages. Evidence and arguments can be adduced also to show that separation remains. This is what Popper does. He attempts to show that whereas scientific laws are testable and potentially falsifiable, metaphysical statements are not.
The notion of cause, which Hume questioned as part of his sceptical programme (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part III, Sections II and III) can be questioned as part of a 'linkage and separation programme:' a reinterpretation or, as I call it, a redrawing.
Using my terminology (for event causation):
[event A] <causation (non-sceptical acceptance)> [event B]
(...) here are the 'citation brackets.'
This linkage is to be taken as exhibiting a sub-theme of {directionality}, event A being here the cause of event B.
Hume maintained
[event A] >necessary connection (Hume, Treatise) <[event B]
Hume did accept these linkages
[event A] <contiguous in space and time> [event B]
[event A] <prior to> [event B]
A further example of a schema which restates Hume comes from Book III, part I, section 1 of 'The Treatise of Human Nature,' illustrating the 'fact-value distinction:'
[ought] <deducible from> [is]
I introduce a separation schema, which, like linkage schemata and contrast schemata allows comparisons to be made clearly and concisely. Separation between [A] and [B] is shown using this notation as:
[A] // [B]
If A is not separated from B:
[A] \\ [B]
As in the case of linkage and contrast schemata, the contents brackets [A] and [B] are ontologically general. They may contain, for instance, propositions, particulars, universals, dependent and independent variables, persons, organizations, institutions, societies. I refer to persons, organizations and societies as more composite. A continuum/discontinuum (whether this is a continuum or a discontinuum is not the issue here, so I leave it unresolved) can show increasing complexity of organization: sub-atomic particles - atoms - molecules - macromolecules - sub-cellular organelles - cells - tissues - organs - organ-systems - organisms - populations of organisms, and this is extended and superimposed-on by cultural and social layers such as human organizations and institutions.
For less-composite contents-items, separation is the default condition. The Principle of Parsimony (attributed, mistakenly, to Ockam in the form 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity') I apply to linkages: 'linkages should not be multiplied beyond necessity.' Linkages have to be argued, not assumed. The arguments may, of course, be very varied: a demonstration of necessary connection, empirical evidence, the balance of probabilities, and, also, a provisional or tentative linkage: a scientific hypothesis is the replacement of separation by a hypothetical linkage. All but the first of these are falsifiable.
As a concrete example of the replacement of separation by linkage, the replacement of // by <>, consider speculations which could have arisen before Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation concerning the linkage between the moon and tides. The proper assumption was:
[moon] // [tides]
not [moon] <some occult cause> [tides]
but [moon] <hypothetical presently unknown force> [tides] was allowable.
Newton's Law gave a (falsifiable) explanation which allowed a more probable linkage to be established.
I, and many others, accept
[moon] // [growth of plants] but the Bio-dynamic school of gardening maintains
[moon] <> [growth of plants] although the moon's influence is only one instance. I don't accept this linkage, but the reasons are not relevant to this discussion - which, in its entirety, is intended mainly to illustrate the application of my notation and terminology - although the use of {separation} does entail a metaphysical position.
{separation} has {/resolution} which has as a close-instance the concept in physics of 'resolving power:' a measure of the ability of an optical instrument such as a microscope or telescope to separate images of objects which are close, or to separate wavelengths of radiation which are close. In practice, the two images will often seem to form one image to the naked eye, and this is an instance which is closer still to to {/resolution}, which is generalized, without specific reference to optical systems. The entities separated may be in time as well as space, and, more generally, in 'ethical space,' 'the space of personality' and many other spaces, taken as areas to which {separation} is applied. A very important application is breaking down generalizations, making necessary distinctions which are not obvious to the mind which does not carry out resolution, which treats as one entity a cluster of separate entities. {/resolution] amongst other things clarifies the separate entities.
Separation may involve redrawing and, also, extension of established words and concepts. For example, ambiguity, possession of multiple interpretations or meanings, can be extended to ambiguity of function. This gives a linkage between verbal ambiguity and the multi-functional design principles I explore in the section of this site concerned with gardening - for example, boards which have multiple functions. For the ideas used, see Design Principles. See also the discussion above on the rope - ending life and saving life.
