The mnovum organum is a project that explores how memorized, indexed, minimalist concepts can be applied to thinking and reasoning. Monuments, records and the edifice explore that aim through subject domains- to explore disciplined reasoning. Here, the same method is applied to designing the mnovum organum itself, as a research method.

Ordinarily, research is intimately dependent on external references, and the reasoning is mediated through writing. Below is a running list of aphoristic propositions that I distill/paraphrase from readings in science and philosophy. These are the concepts that I index in memory in order to think through precisely and without recourse to writing.

Each is foundational, but provisional- which is aligned with a contemporary understanding of memory as a mental faculty under constant revision and reconstruction. They read like strong claims to clarify and memorize them so that more nuanced reasoning has identifiable targets.

Definitions (These draw much from Deleuze, but not as metaphysics- instead, an epistemology.

  • That which affects or is affected by other things.

  • A change produced through an encounter between things.

  • A distinction arising from an affection in a living system.Description text goes here

  • The persistence of traces of previous affections available as thought.

  • The convergence of differences into a distinguishable unity.Item description

  • An individuation of multiple components held together in a consistent relation.Item description

  • Something that refers to or distinguishes something else.

  • Mnemonic presence accessible through thought.

  • Objective presence accessible through perception.

  • That which exists, whether actual or virtual.

  • The process of mnemonic re/construction.

Propositions

  • A virtual thing is not a re-presentation of an actual thing. Virtual things remain immanent to the traces of distinct perceptions (e.g. senses).

    A sign enables communication between the virtual and virtual (a single thinker) as well as between virtual and actual (intersubjective and objective presence).

  • Where thought is the construction or reconstruction of memory, learning involves the automation of construction such that reconstruction becomes a non-conscious augmentation of perception.

  • Example:
    As one reads these words the sounding-out, meaning and syntax is already automated reconstruction. We learn so that effortful, but frequently-needed processes are automated and non-conscious, freeing resources for construction of novel meaning. If this were a foreign language, it would be obvious which processes would require automation to be on the same plane as a native language.

  • Signs