Schroder sq and the new talea

On the deconstruction of gladius & scutum I'll defer to Henry James, whose modern perspective on Romans and intrinsic quality & universal valuation(embodied in the ideal of perfect marriage) is captured in the symbol of the Golden Bowl. Perhaps the Imperium is closer than we know...

"The Prince had always liked his London, when it had come to him; he was one of the modern Romans who find by the Thames a more convincing image of the truth of the ancient state than any they have left by the Tiber. Brought up on the legend of the City to which the world paid tribute, he recognised in the present London much more than in contemporary Rome the real dimensions of such a case..."

"Oh, marble floors!" But she might have been thinking—for they were a connection, marble floors; a connection with many things: with her old Rome, and with his; with the palaces of his past, and, a little, of hers; with the possibilities of his future, with the sumptuosities of his marriage, with the wealth of the Ververs. All the same, however, there were other things; and they all together held for a moment her fancy. "Does crystal then break—when it IS crystal? I thought its beauty was its hardness."

Her friend, in his way, discriminated. "Its beauty is its BEING crystal. But its hardness is certainly, its safety. It doesn't break," he went on, "like vile glass. It splits—if there is a split."

"Ah!"—Charlotte breathed with interest. "If there is a split." And she looked down again at the bowl. "There IS a split, eh? Crystal does split, eh?"

"On lines and by laws of its own."

"You mean if there's a weak place?"

For all answer, after an hesitation, he took the bowl up again, holding it aloft and tapping it with a key. It rang with the finest, sweetest sound. "Where is the weak place?"

She then did the question justice. "Well, for ME, only the price."

Another one that come to mind is the Coke bottle discarded from an airplane that becomes an object of religious veneration for a primitive tribe in the "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Finally in Antonioni's "Blow-Up", David Hemmings fighting off concert fans to take possession of Jeff Beck's broken guitar neck-- a prize that is immediately devalued by being discarded on a street corner before indifferent passers-by.

As Lewm said, it's a tonearm.

Another one that comes to mind is the Coke bottle discarded from an airplane that becomes an object of religious veneration for a primitive tribe in the "The Gods Must Be Crazy." Finally in Antonioni's "Blow-Up", David Hemmings fighting off concert fans to take possession of Jeff Beck's broken guitar neck-- a prize that is immediately devalued by being discarded on a street corner before indifferent passers-by.

Two wonderful films! One hysterically funny, the other intellectual and enigmatic. And both very apropos.

Best regards,
-- Al

I see many insightful comments on the Romans, many true at their symmetries of perspective, and equally true there, but I did especially appreciate Derto's mention of assimilation.

In my mind, one of the most evolutionary innovative actions of the Roman collective was the integration of other collective minds' ideas, or thought constructs - a more difficult turn at the time than now, relatively speaking, I suppose (remember, that from the progression of kin to clan to village to polis to state to nation-state, the evolutionary movement is from greater exclusion of other minds towards greater inclusion; which can also be seen as a collective movement from greater recoil to the Other mind to less recoil; from less empathic identification to more). This will towards inclusion of others' ideas by the Romans seems to be a lessening of recoil towards the Other, albeit a limited one from our perspective. Maybe that was a current below the eddies...? (before you feel that recoil, ask: is the eddy separate from the current; is one more "true" water than the other?)

I see here much learning, dazzling actually - about linguistic deconstruction, Aristotelian stuff, murmurings of radical subjectivism, searching for Unicorns, etc. - but I have one question:

What is trans-cognitive knowledge? And if there is a perception beyond formal operational cognition, then what would it see?

Would it see deeper symmetries of "quality" or "truth" or "beauty"?

And would those that are not yet ready to go there still say that "that" does not exist, could not exist? Arguing for their own limitations, don't the minds holding on to the past against change, seeing it as always a chaos, necessarily have to say to each other, to themselves, that such see-ing is indeed where dragons be, as the illusion of the Nothing-ness yawns (Was that enough bread on the water, or did I go too far?!).

If you "will", please, tell-me "what" "this" "means:"

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections,
The water has no mind to receive their images.

M-

"What is trans-cognitive knowledge? And if there is a perception beyond formal operational cognition, then what would it see?"

This question is addressed by the crack in the bowl--a complex metaphor suggestive of the failure of knowledge and the symmetries, elsewhere in James a mutation of liminal inter-connectedness into spiritual vampirism. Gladius and scotum as mark of quality or as glandular pustule of the Roman venerium?

Asa,'what would IT see?' Ie what a perception beyond,etc
would see? Metaphors are, I thought, meant to explain or 'enlight' something in a lucid way. You obviously
constructed one but whay should we explain your metaphor?
A metaphor is supposed to do this by itself, so to speak.
To my mind our eye can see, our ear can hear, etc. But what
our brain does we can only 'quess' with the help of produced sentences by the brain in casu.Ie I have no idea
what your 'message' is.
Regards,