a founder of the codex

Innocence

Innoxella aperta·the Unharmed Gaze

From Latin innoxius, harmless, and apertus, open, for a harmless creature open on every side.

Level
Conceptorganism
Phylum
Verticalityimage schema
Class
Decayits forbidden fruit
Niche
Producerraw experience
Mode
Reproductionhow it keeps existing
Stage
Matureindividuated
Status
Living
Habitat
Forest

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Moral Affections · Wilkins, 1668: Habit · WordNet, 1990: Attribute · Llull, 1308: K · Instrumentative

Unharmed Gaze, the whole specimen
Plate XXVIII. Innoxella aperta, the whole specimen.

A gaze that harm has yet to reach trusts what it sees, and it is known most clearly by the first betrayal that ends it.

To see the world as good is a gift that ends the first time the world betrays it.

behavior Turns its whole face toward each new thing, and leans its weight on the wind as if the wind were good.

provocation

What did you believe about the world before the first time it let you down?

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 decay, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Innocence

Fig. 1. Kernel

Harmless dove

Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?

Its premise is a gaze that harm has yet to touch, so it meets the world expecting good. The Latin innocens means harmless.2

drawn as: harmless dove · view: transparent

Boundary of Innocence

Fig. 2. Boundary

Clean hands

What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?

It is defined against guilt, and the law keeps that line by presuming every accused person innocent until guilt is proved.3

drawn as: clean hands · view: detached

Intake of Innocence

Fig. 3. Intake

Sense of wonder

What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?

It feeds on wonder, on the first sight of tides, stars and small living things, met while they are still new.5

drawn as: sense of wonder · view: series

Mechanism of Innocence

Fig. 4. Mechanism

Face value

How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?

It works by openness, taking each thing at face value with its guard down, so whatever comes reaches it whole.4, 2

drawn as: face value · view: exploded

Output of Innocence

Fig. 5. Output

Basic trust

What does it make possible, visible or knowable?

It gives trust, the sense that the world and its people can be relied on, which an infant forms first when its care is steady.4

drawn as: basic trust · view: cross section

Dispersal of Innocence

Fig. 6. Dispersal

Spotless lamb

What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?

It travels in the image of the child's gaze, the lamb and the garden before the fall, as poems and scripture carry it.2, 1

drawn as: spotless lamb · view: detached

Decay of Innocence

Fig. 7. Decay

Forbidden fruit

❦ dominant organ

What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?

It ends at the first betrayal, since harm once known stays known, as the eyes opened in Eden stay open. What it leaves is experience, the knowing that Blake set beside it.1, 2

drawn as: forbidden fruit · view: pressed

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Wilkins Geomancy, Music, Patience, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology

same kind in WordNet Aura, Patience, Symmetry

same kind in Llull Chiaroscuro, Faith, Geomancy, Lullaby, Music, Patience, Pointillism, Ritual, Syllable, Symbol, Foresilence, Tide of Days, Subtractive Phenomenology

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

same dominant organ Entropy, Memory, Oblivion, Petrification

Genome

III In the world

Echoes

  • Blake's Songs of Innocence
  • the garden of Eden
  • the presumption of innocence in a courtroom
  • a toddler reaching for a stranger's hand

IV Record

How it was drawn

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

axisvalue
bookflora
symmetryamorphous
organizationnested
silhouettecluster
scaleimmense
proportiontapering latent
growthfaceted
articulationtethered latent
opennesslattice
skeletonendoskeleton latent
locomotionburrowing latent
patternlabyrinth latent
colorationcryptic latent
substancenacre
surfacemottled
palettegilt
luminosityinner glow
transparencytransparent
gesturebalances
unityintegral latent
modalityunmarked latent
causationfinal
determinacyunmarked latent
fusioncarried
anomalyone break
graftstair
techniquehatching
viewpointbelow
valuechiaroscuro latent
balanceleaning latent
densitysparse latent
rhythmalternating latent
saturationunmarked latent
appendagespetals, cilia
anchor (body)a fluorite octahedron, glassy and colour-zoned
anchor (detail)a Lichtenberg figure, a branching tree of discharge burned into a surface

Sources

  1. Genesis 2 and 3
  2. William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
  3. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), article 11
  4. Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (1950)
  5. Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (1965)

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