Something from nothing?
Over the years I've run numerous web searches on the book Laws of Forum by
G. Spencer Brown. I read it well over thirty years ago and thought it incredibly
profound, even if I'm not really sure whether then, or now, I understood it beyond
it's first few pages. After numerous web searches I've begun to believe that perhaps
other readers, and who knows, maybe even the author himself, didn't really understand
it either.
Regardless of whether it's a serious work of philosophy or not,
the very basic and opening principle has remained with me as a benchmark for viewing
all activity. As one groupie for
the work tells it: The Laws of Form begin
with nothing and draw a distinction. The laws of calling and crossing
describe fundamental ways of transforming structures of distinctions.
Chances
are very good that it's precisely this need to draw a distinction (rather than
something inherent in a particular snippet of information) that causes me to use
one tool rather than another in any given information-gathering situation. And
if that's the case, then perhaps I shouldn't seek seamless integration at all.
Go to: Making
a distinction, or
Go to: Doing things
the hard way.