a founder of the codex

Erosion

Abrasoria lenta·the Patient Scour

From Latin abradere, to scrape away, and lentus, slow, for a slow scraper of the land.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Verticalityimage schema
Class: Outputits inselberg
Niche: Decomposerwhat is dead
Mode: Habithow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Ruin

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Inorganic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: World · WordNet, 1990: Process · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Patient Scour, the whole specimen — Plate XX. Abrasoria lenta, the whole specimen.

Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.

Whatever stands up is already being carried down.

behavior Lies almost still for centuries, works fastest in storms, and leaves its hardest parts standing alone as everything around them is carried off.

provocation

What hard part of an old memory still stands after the rest has worn away?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its output, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Erosion — Fig. 1. Kernel
Deep time
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Any height left open to water, wind and ice is worn down grain by grain, and small forces given enough time level mountains.¹
drawn as: deep time · view: cast

Boundary of Erosion — Fig. 2. Boundary
Base level
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is defined against what raises and lays down land, uplift, eruption and deposition. It works on ground standing above base level, the lowest level to which running water can cut.^{1, 2}
drawn as: base level · view: cast

Intake of Erosion — Fig. 3. Intake
Regolith
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on bare rock and soil open to the weather, and on the cracks and loose grains that frost, roots and chemical weathering prepare for it.³
drawn as: regolith · view: magnified

Mechanism of Erosion — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Scour
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Running water, moving ice and wind drag grains over the ground, and each pass scrapes a little away, so the work is done by repetition over long spans of time.^{3, 1}
drawn as: scour · view: at work

Output of Erosion — Fig. 5. Output
Inselberg
❦ dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It carves valleys, canyons and cliffs, and leaves the hardest rock standing, such as an inselberg rising alone above the gentle slope of bare rock worn around it, the pediment or glacis.⁵
drawn as: inselberg · view: series

Dispersal of Erosion — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Delta
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
What it removes travels as sediment, carried by rivers and wind to deltas, dunes and the sea floor, where it settles in layers that become the rock of future land.¹
drawn as: delta · view: detached

Decay of Erosion — Fig. 7. Decay
Peneplain
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It slows as it succeeds. The lower the land, the slower the wearing, and an old landscape ends as a nearly level plain close to base level, the peneplain, until new uplift starts the work again.^{4, 2}
drawn as: peneplain · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Fire, Frost, Lake, Rain, River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Wind

same kind in Wilkins Archipelago, Possession

same kind in WordNet Awakening, Breath, Entelechy, Entropy, Fire, Metamorphosis, Petrification, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door

same kind in Llull Amber, Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Fire, Frost, Iridescence, Lake, Petrification, Rain, Reflection, Resonance, Resonance (second reading), River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Weightlessness, Wind, Winter, Self-Ending Order

same phylum Awakening, Cloud, Faith, Innocence, Miracle, Rain, Vertigo, Weightlessness

same dominant organ Apophenia, Awakening, Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Emergence, Glossolalia, Iridescence, Mimesis, Nostalgia, Placebo, Rain, Spring, Babelhum, Afterlistening, Tide of Days

Genome

wearing
repetition also in Echolalia, Lullaby, Ritual
sediment also in Lake
relief also in Chiaroscuro, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)
levelling

III In the world

Echoes

the Grand Canyon
Uluru rising above the central Australian plain
a sea stack cut off from its cliff
stone steps hollowed by centuries of feet

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 2, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	flora
symmetry	fractal
organization	segmented
silhouette	fan
scale	hand
proportion	graded latent
growth	intercalary
articulation	jointed latent
openness	solid latent
skeleton	test latent
locomotion	rolling latent
pattern	gradient
coloration	warning latent
substance	silk
surface	beaded
palette	indigo
luminosity	none
transparency	layered latent
gesture	rises
unity	composite
modality	unmarked latent
causation	material
determinacy	doubled latent
fusion	becoming
anomaly	wound bloom
graft	stair
technique	watercolour
viewpoint	profile
value	high key latent
balance	grounded latent
density	graded detail latent
rhythm	alternating latent
saturation	muted latent
appendages	plumes, tentacles
anchor (body)	a chrysalis, a jewelled sealed case hanging from a silk pad
anchor (detail)	hoarfrost, feathery ice crystals growing along an edge

Sources

James Hutton, Theory of the Earth (1788)
John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (1875), on base level
Grove Karl Gilbert, Report on the Geology of the Henry Mountains (1877)
William Morris Davis, The Geographical Cycle (Geographical Journal, 1899)
Lester C. King, Canons of Landscape Evolution (Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1953)

❦