[FRIAM] OK. That's funny.

[Steve Smith]

Jon -

Thanks!  I think I followed all (most) of that...  

I wanted to comment on your introduction of rhizomal vs arborescent from
another post/thread but got tangled in trying to untangle how much of
those two "modalities" derive from their naming metaphors and how apt
they are since they respond to my questioning of *archical structures
and seeking alternatives to those, and/or an appreciation for how
multiple, coupled hierarchies (*archies?) might yield a substrate where
more complex dynamical structures can operate *without* necessarily
requiring or generating evident structure.   The interaction between
mycorhizzal guilds and various tree roots would seem to be a good
example.   I do not believe that their structure is "arborescent" and
don't know "yet" if the etymology of rhizome and mycorhiza imply similar
structures...  I think they both merely reference "rootness".

I happen to be having a very good "sunchoke" year, which spread
rhizomally and in fact it is the starchy rhizomes that *I* grow them for
( a nutty flavored rhizome that can be eaten raw like jicama or cooked
like a potato or a turnip).    They are apparently in the sunflower
family (and the stalks/leaves/flowers are sunflowerish), suggesting to
me that rhizomal propagation is more universal than I imagined before.  
I've been watching each year to try to understand better how the
rhyzomes "propogate"...   during the growing season I watch new shoots
emerge at the periphery of the "bed" and then during harvest (starting
in Fall, ensuing as-needed through winter) discovering the actual
distribution and shape of the rhizomes, and then the resulting
distribution of the "bits" i leave or return to the bed (or new beds).  

- Steve

> Ha, yeah. Originally, I had only meant to compare two (potentially
> hallucinatory) modalities that I find myself humoring. On the one hand, an
> arborescent ordering of my world (universal grammar of belief), and on the
> other something more like a nomadic exploration of a rhizome. As a sort of
> side comment to this, I mentioned a weak rejection of Peircean truth
> relative to such a universal grammar of belief (UGB). There were also
> caveats, I am talking about belief in a narrow sense. For these purposes, I
> claim beliefs to be things that we discover via performance (belief
> competence) and not the kind of things discoverable by reflecting on
> hypotheticals. Additionally, along the lines of Chomsky's universal grammar,
> UGBs are arbitrarily given by the historical accident of biology. This last
> point opens the door to a reasonable assumption that any two people will
> ultimately disagree on what they are capable of believing. What I find
> interesting in this characterization is that apt-beliefs (roughly, beliefs
> that one has and ought to have) may be part of the commons in the short run,
> but are likely to be ruled out in the long run, and so will be found false
> by a Peircean determination of truth. Again, the idea is that even if one
> can profit in the world by putting their apt-belief to work, these beliefs
> will generally be non-transferrable exactly because they will not be part of
> another's UGB. I personally have no emotional investment in these ideas
> (making no claim even in a broader sense to believe them), but the logic of
> it all seemed curious enough to post about.
>
>
>
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