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Chrysalis Memories of being held In Honor of My Parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary |
“That is a chrysalis”, she said, when I showed her that funny-looking thing on the leaf. In that moment I, the thing, and the word were one. I learned a word, I wrapped it around a new-found thing, and I listened in wonder to my mother’s story of what it was and what it would be.
Inquiry Into Inquiry 
Dear Meno,
when we practice rhetorical or surgical arts
how much can we take away from a thing
before what’s left is no longer that thing
but only some orphaned parts?
PR
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.
That’s the same answer I would give. IMO the question of universals and wholeness is unsolvable by logic, but second-nature to brains. A brain knows a thing’s type or a part from a whole when it sees it. The so-called universal or whole is entirely the prerogative of each individual brain based on its history of associations.
I think Plato and/or Socrates might have liked this answer, inasmuch as — to the best of my recollection — the dialogue is really an exploration of Pythagorean teachings about the immortality of the soul (metempsychosis) and learning as recollection (anamnesis).
There one was seeker empirical
who questioned the limits of spherical
and the outermost bound
it can be out of round
before it becomes polyhedrical
PR