'Pataphysics

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 23 Jan 2024 03:12
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    • ‘Pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of the general. ‘Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions.
      • – Alfred Jarry
    • 'Pataphysics, knowledge of the specific and irreducible, is therefore the opposite of physics.
      • – René Daumal
    • the most serious of all the sciences.
      • – Dr. Sandomir
    • Ever since the mind developed as a machine to think without fingers, ’pataphysics has been around as a renegade rationality, whose project has been the ludic anamorphosization of Truth, Science and their reactionary structures, regulatory ideals and compromise formations. Ludic? By all means ludic. Yet a strict tenet of imperturbability is fundamental to all ’pataphysical endeavours. ’Pataphysics is serious, for to effectively debunk the serious it must itself be taken seriously. Neither parodic, nor partaking of the logic of the absurd, ’Pataphysics operates as a decidedly unofficial contaminant, generated within, and as a part of, all or any scientific production. Installing itself within those rational endeavors of syllogism, ratiocination, and truth production, it asserts its own status as an essential and partconstitutional contaminant.
    • On the superficial level, computation and pataphysics should have little to do with each other, or even be opposed in some sense. Computation is all about finding similarities and building abstractions to capture them. It doesn't like exceptions very much and tries to iron them out in its role as the handmaiden of state bureaucracy.
    • I'll just say that the computational environment I grew up on, and remains the best I've used (the MIT Lisp Machine), combined a rich object-oriented model with a REPL, which created the feeling of interacting with individualized unique objects. And it featured a very sophisticated way of dealing with exceptions, far surpassing any programming environment of today.
    • So perhaps the real power of Lisp is that it combines mathematical and pataphysical sensibilities.
    • See also

      • patarationality emerged on Twitter and disappeared instantly, out of a conversation about postrationalism which is apparently something nobody wants to be.