Part 09: Seldon’s Message Series -- ‘Categoryology’ [Categories Character-Language].

Part 09:  Seldon’s Message Series --

‘Categoryology’ [Categories Character-Language].

Dear Readers,

It is my pleasure, and my honor, as an officer of the Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.] Office of Public Liaison, to share with you, from time to time, as they are approved for public release by the F.E.D. General Council, key excerpts from the internal writings, and from the internal sayings, of our co-founder, Karl Seldon.

The ninth such release in this new series is entered below [Some E.D. standard edits have been applied, in the version presented below, to the direct transcript of our co-founder’s discourse].

This instalment addresses the fundamental nature of ‘Categorial Ideography’ that Seldon discovered.

For more information regarding, and for [further] instantiations of, these Seldonian insights, please see --

www.dialectics.info

ENJOY!

Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,

Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica [F.E.D.],

Participant, F.E.D. Special Council for Public Liaison,

Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison.

“... Categories are something that we constantly use, in our thinking, our speaking, our writing, often without being aware of that use, and of their usefulness.”

“Our ideography is a shorthand, an algebra, a “character language” [cf. Leibniz] -- a language that uses “borrowed” phonetic characters to represent, no longer sounds of speech, but, instead, the humans-made idea-objects that are whole categories; to represent all of their content.”

“It is a language about how categories combine.”

“However, the key to the meaningfulness of the sentence above is that this categorial ideography covers not just the “combinations” of one category-symbol with one or more other, disparate category-symbols. The key to the success of this ideography is that it also covers the ‘self-combinations’ of categories.”

  

“That’s what makes this ‘categoryological’ algebra, or “class” algebra, more than Boolean.  This algebra does, indeed contain the Boolean part of the ‘‘‘self-multiplication’’’ of a category or “class” symbol.  But its form of category-symbol ‘‘‘self-multiplication’’’ also goes beyond that Boolean part.”

“What does the ‘self-combination’ or ‘‘‘self-multiplication’’’ of a category-variable represent, per this ‘categoryology’?”

“Consider the “units” called “letters of the alphabet”, or “phonetic characters”.  By the presently-existing [net] ‘self-combination’ of that category, we may mean, for example, the category of “words” -- of word “units”, words being another, higher level, higher scale -- more inclusive -- kind of “units” in relation to the letter “units”.  The word “units” contain letter “units”.  That is, each typical word unit contains multiple letter units.

“Or consider the “unit” called “an atom”, of the category called “atoms”.  We hold that the earliest “molecular clouds”, in the early phases of our universe, from which new stars [and, later, new planetary systems] formed, began as ‘‘‘atomic clouds’’’.  Atom-units are presently combined to form another, higher level, higher scale kind of “units”, molecule-units, that “belong to” the category of “molecules”.”  The molecule “units” contain atom “units”.  That is, each typical molecule unit contains multiple atom units.

“The discovery that this ‘categoryology’ is dialectical is best grasped as a discovery after the fact.  First comes the category-ideography/-algebra/-shorthand.  Later comes the observation that it is a dialectical ideography. Such an observation may be made by those who have gained experience with using this ‘categoryology’ repeatedly, to help them to guide their thoughts in domains of practical application, and who have thereby become familiar with its ways.  They may notice, in time, that its patterns mime different aspects of those of the classical «species» of ‘Rhetorical Dialectics’, in Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx. ...”