58
South African Blombos Cave. All the best dating techniques in the world—from
standard radiocarbon to uranium series, potassium-argon, argon-40/argon-39, to
paleomagnetism
6
—can bring us within a single millennium of the decisive artistic
execution by someone of that noteworthy impression, a primeval example of human
art, consciousness, or something else. But, in fact, while its discovery marked the
oldest known target to date of such aesthetic forensics, we can come no closer to
understanding what it is: Symbol, love letter, urgent telegram, warning, epiphany,
doodle? The fact that we should even care is also in a class of paradoxes.
7
These classes or sub-classes, as in any taxonomy or topology, are systems; paradoxical systems which comprise both organization, procedure, method, as well as
events. Such categorically difficult forms of experience are couched in anomalies
and perceptions. Mathematically, they are inscribed in equations designating time
and space, divisibility or indivisibility. In logic, language, and philosophy in general, they inhabit, we must assume, every hypothesis, thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis. They manifest as antinomies—Immanuel Kant declared four of them in
6 See “Best Ways to Get a Date,” by Michael W. Robbins, “Finding Time,” in The American
Scholar, Autumn 2018, pp. 42–43.
7 See Letter | Published: 12 September 2018, Nature Journal, “An abstract drawing from the
73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa,”Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco
d’Errico, Karen L. van Niekerk, Laure Dayet, Alain Queffelec & Luca Pollarolo , https://www.
nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0514-3, Accessed September 15, 2018.
Fig. 7.2 Paradoxurus quadriscriptus = P. hermaphroditus [Asian Palm Civet], 1856, by Artist
Joseph Wolf, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London
7 Pathologies of Self-Image
South African Blombos Cave. All the best dating techniques in the world—from
standard radiocarbon to uranium series, potassium-argon, argon-40/argon-39, to
paleomagnetism
6
—can bring us within a single millennium of the decisive artistic
execution by someone of that noteworthy impression, a primeval example of human
art, consciousness, or something else. But, in fact, while its discovery marked the
oldest known target to date of such aesthetic forensics, we can come no closer to
understanding what it is: Symbol, love letter, urgent telegram, warning, epiphany,
doodle? The fact that we should even care is also in a class of paradoxes.
7
These classes or sub-classes, as in any taxonomy or topology, are systems; paradoxical systems which comprise both organization, procedure, method, as well as
events. Such categorically difficult forms of experience are couched in anomalies
and perceptions. Mathematically, they are inscribed in equations designating time
and space, divisibility or indivisibility. In logic, language, and philosophy in general, they inhabit, we must assume, every hypothesis, thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis. They manifest as antinomies—Immanuel Kant declared four of them in
6 See “Best Ways to Get a Date,” by Michael W. Robbins, “Finding Time,” in The American
Scholar, Autumn 2018, pp. 42–43.
7 See Letter | Published: 12 September 2018, Nature Journal, “An abstract drawing from the
73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa,”Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco
d’Errico, Karen L. van Niekerk, Laure Dayet, Alain Queffelec & Luca Pollarolo , https://www.
nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0514-3, Accessed September 15, 2018.
Fig. 7.2 Paradoxurus quadriscriptus = P. hermaphroditus [Asian Palm Civet], 1856, by Artist
Joseph Wolf, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London
7 Pathologies of Self-Image