Paul Hurt's linkage site: home page

Most pages (but not this) use an innovation in Web navigation, 'the rail,' a long, thin band on the left margin.
Clicking on the rail gives a means of reaching top of page very quickly. At top of page, in most cases, links
are provided for easy page travel, travel within the page and travel to other pages.

The British Library (the national library of the United Kingdom) has selected all of this site for preservation, in the
Arts and Humanities / Literature archive and the Computer Science, Information Technology and Web Technology archive

After the collection of images below, there's a list of ideas, concepts and issues - very varied and wide-ranging - which I
discuss in the pages on the project TTL, 'Theme, theory, practice.' This project involves practical applications as well
as abstract theory.

For some time, I've been working on new, very demanding design projects. The time I have available for other projects is restricted.
Pages which I intended to revise and extend will have to remain for now in more or less their present state.

PHDC Paul Hurt Design-Construction offers genuine innovation, practicality
and a concern for aesthetics in the design and construction of

Greenhouses - greenhouses with presence, flexible, adaptable, with large, removable panels
to lower the internal temperature during heat waves and to allow rainfall to water the crops in
the greenhouse, reducing use of hose-pipes, with water-collecting surfaces to conserve water.
Other water-collecting surfaces, directing water to storage containers, a pond or directly to plants.
Implementing green roofs with grape vines / hop plants, avoiding the use of bulky, heavy soil.
New bed-and-board systems in gardens / allotments, with many advantages.
A solar composter, speeding up production of compost by the greenhouse effect.
A new grape vine trellising system.
A radical new roofing system, allowing inclined roofs (including water collecting roofs)
to be constructed as easily as flat roofs, complemented by a new walling system.
Workbenches for woodworking / metalworking, easy to construct, easy to dismantle,
easy to move from place to place, but solid and immovable in use, with ample storage
space and versatile working surfaces.
A vice system for woodworking with pressure exerted by a ratchet strap, not a screw thread.
Hydraulic machinery for log splitting / apple pressing, elegant, useful furniture when not in use.
Other domestic furniture- a table, a bookcase - distinctive designs, not copies.
Van to campervan conversions which are cost-effective, practical - and harmonious.
Wildlife aids - a bird table, a swift nesting box which is easily and safely installed.
Simple aids to moving loads on slopes and level ground in gardens / allotments.
Simple aids to safe working, e.g. in sheet metal work.
As well as contributions to design / construction in fields other than these.
Linkages as well as contrasts underlie to a greater or lesser extent most of this site.
I stress methods, techniques, ideas, values that are common to very different
fields of activity, ones which unify, and not only in design but far more widely -
the project TTL, 'Theme, Theory, Practice.'

Images are an important part of the site. So too are ideas and concepts, particularly
the concepts I call {themes}. I discuss many, many applications of {themes} in pages
of the site. These two lists give some idea of their range and variety. In the first list, the
examples are organized by {theme}. Each {theme} has its own page in the site. The
second list gives applications which are all discussed in the page 'Interpretations.'
The treatment is more detailed and thorough.

1.
{adjustment}
Pseudo-science
Commercial pressures
Nietzsche
Goya and violence

{completion}
Mathematical proof
Truth tables
Digital electronics
Biological taxonomy
Aristotle's 'telos'
Gothic and Renaissance architecture

{direction}
Generalised linkage connective
Implication
Material conditional
Teleological arguments
Trends
Vectors and directed lines
Ferromagnetism
Entropy
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.144

{distance}
The key system in music
modulation in poetry
The unities of drama
Narrative {distance}
'Du' and 'Sie' in German
Edward Bullough's aesthetic {distance}
Wordsworth's boy at Windermere
The subjunctive and optative in Thucydides iii, 22
Web design and {distance}
The law of negligence

{modification}
The Journey
James Connolly and the Easter Rising
Innovation
Nietzsche
Transformation in Rembrandt and Rilke
Mind, body and the rest of the world
George Orwell: capital and corporal punishment
Activism and opposition
{modification} by {diversification}
The necessary, the impossible and the contingent
The ship of Theseus
Invariance
Variables and pretensions
Corroboration and falsification
Typography and action
Modal properties

{ordering}
Ethical decision-making
Digital technology
Military medicine: triage
Priorities in politics
Dependence
Nietzsche
{ordering} and {grouping}
The mind and concentration

{restriction}
Limitation and limits
Disappointment and imperfection
Exemption: slavery
Quantum mechanics
Jokes
Linkage schemata
((surveys))
Framing
Linkage isolation
Isolation and abstraction
Isolation and 'The Whole Truth'
Isolation and distortion
Poetry and prose
Kant and the limits to knowledge
Allowing and disallowing

{reversal}
Thermodynamic reversal
Elastic deformation
Negation
Undoing
Inversion and musical intervals

{separation}
Of people: Shakespeare
Of people: Auschwitz-Birkenau
Commuters
Between past and present
Vegetables and fruit
Human characteristics and versatility
Thermodynamic separation
{separation} and application-sphere
{separation} and separability
Causation
Areas of competence

{substitution}
Evaluating the thing itself
Mathematical and scientific {substitution}

2.
Commutative operators
Demarcation: science-metaphysics
Endothermic and exothermic reactions
Foundationalism and coherentism
Implication
Induction
Inertia
Infinitesimals
Interchangeability
Intervals
Inverses of functions
Kantian categories
Mendelian factors
Meta- and para-studies
Newton's first law of motion
Newton's third law of motion
Pacifism
Particle in a box
Polish (prefix) notation
Referents (ambiguity of, in similes)
Regions
Schopenhauer's pessimism
Selection: natural and artificial
SI units
Thermodynamic systems as partitions

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Email address: paulhurt100@gmail.com

The page Site Map About this site includes background information, including this, 'Emails sent to me are treated as confidential. Emails sent to me won't be released into the public domain, including publication on this site, unless with the sender's permission.' It also includes my policy on the profiles to be found on some pages, including my reasons for including profiles and circumstances in which I could remove profiles.

Mikhail Bakhtin writes of "Dostoevsky's passion for journalism and his love of the newspaper, his deep and subtle understanding of the newspaper page as a living reflection of the contradictions of contemporary society in the cross-section of a single day, where the most diverse and contradictory material is laid out, extensively, side by side..." (Quoted in 'Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,' translation by Caryl Emerson.)

My approach is in part systematic and rigorous, sometimes at a high level of abstraction, but I see no contradiction between system and rigour on the one hand and on the other, passion, compassion, activism, humour, an intense concern for the health of language and the vitality of culture, a whole range of other concerns. A systematic study can reveal gaps very clearly. The meticulous work of cartographers helped to show explorers which regions were still unexplored, to suggest new areas for risk and discovery. Activism and activists - deluded and deranged activists as well as ones I respect and admire - politics and politicians, have a part to play in the pages of the site, but also journalists, poets, musicians, scientists, engineers, labourers, scholars, miners, and many more, including animals.

The 'diverse material' in this site covers a very wide range, some of it of journalistic, some of it academic, some of it personal, some of it practical - working with wood, metal, other materials, designing and constructing buildings, other structures and sometimes machines, the growing of a wide range of plants. Some of it is concerned with aesthetics, some of it is concerned with ethics - with humane values and harshness, unavoidable harshness as well as harshness which can be reduced by reform or technical advances, harshness in peace and harshness in war, industry and nature.

Pages concerned with value judgments include appreciation as well as criticism - fair-minded and balanced, I think, even when outspoken. There's criticism of anti-feminists as well as radical feminists, criticism of many people who oppose 'political correctness' as well as criticism of 'political correctness,' criticism of religious views - mainly, Christian views - without assuming that non-Christians and anti-Christians have a monopoly of good sense, without assuming that they are incapable of stupidity (and worse), arguments and evidence in favour of 'conservative' views, but with reservations. The page on university education contains strong criticism of some aspects of some universities - I focus attention on Cambridge but discuss others - without overlooking their very impressive strengths.

The study of linkages is one of the broadest of all studies. Linkages, and contrasts, are fundamental organizing principles of the site. I discuss linkages in many different fields and create new ones - there are many innovations here.

Many linkages are problematic and disputed. Astrologers find a linkage between human personality and celestial objects whilst skeptics find no convincing evidence. Scientific advances involve new linkages: Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation proposed a linkage between all the bodies in the Universe, Darwin's Theory of Evolution new linkages between organisms.

Most of the material is non-technical. The page introducing {theme} theory (which includes linkage and contrast) is one exception. I explain some conceptual innovations and go beyond natural language, developing a symbolic notation with many uses and substantial advantages. Pages which make use of this notation include Interpretations. Most of these concern topics in mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy and logic, including commutative operators, thermodynamic systems as partitions, inverses of functions, indeterminate logic, induction, prefix notation, foundationalism, coherentism, S.I. units.

Ethics: theory and practice has technical and non-technical sections. It introduces symbolic notation for 'outweighing,' a concept which I see as fundamental in ethics but with important, wide-ranging application-spheres.