a founder of the codex

Lake

Limnaria tenens·the Held Sky

From Greek limne, lake, and Latin tenens, holding, the still water that holds what flows into it and the sky above it.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Containerimage schema
Class: Intakeits catchment
Niche: Consumerother ideas
Mode: Attachmenthow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Archive

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

Held Sky, the whole specimen — Plate XXX. Limnaria tenens, the whole specimen.

A lake is still water held in a basin, which keeps what flows into it, lets it settle in layers, and mirrors the sky on a surface calm enough to hold it.

What is held still long enough settles, clears and shows the sky.

behavior It lies still for years, takes in whatever the slopes send down, and on calm mornings shows the whole sky on its surface.

provocation

What has been settling in you, layer by layer, while your surface stayed calm?

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

Kernel of Lake — Fig. 1. Kernel
Standing water
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
A lake is water held still in a basin, filled faster than it drains, so that it stays for years and becomes a small world of its own.^{2, 3}
drawn as: standing water · view: detached

Boundary of Lake — Fig. 2. Boundary
Thermocline
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
Its stillness sets it apart from a river, and in summer it layers, warm water floating on cold with a sharp step in temperature between them.^{3, 1}
drawn as: thermocline · view: transparent

Intake of Lake — Fig. 3. Intake
Catchment
❦ dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It gathers what flows in from its whole catchment, streams, rain and runoff, with the silt, leaves and salts they carry, and keeps most of it.³
drawn as: catchment · view: microscope

Mechanism of Lake — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Sediment trap
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Still water lets what it gathers sink, so silt, pollen and dead plankton settle to the floor in thin yearly layers while the water above clears.³
drawn as: sediment trap · view: cast

Output of Lake — Fig. 5. Output
Earth's eye
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
Its calm surface doubles the sky and the shore, and Thoreau called it the earth's eye, in which a watcher measures the depth of their own nature.⁴
drawn as: earth's eye · view: transparent

Dispersal of Lake — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Waterfowl
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
Its life travels from basin to basin on waterbirds, whose feet and feathers carry seeds, snails and eggs in clinging mud.⁵
drawn as: waterfowl · view: in situ

Decay of Lake — Fig. 7. Decay
Peat bog
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
Left alone it fills with its own mud and weed until it turns to marsh and then bog, and cut off from its rivers it shrinks to salt flats, as the Aral Sea did.³
drawn as: peat bog · 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 Roget Archipelago, Ash, Clay, Cloud, Diamond, Erosion, Fire, Frost, Rain, River, Salt, Sand, Storm, Wind

same kind in Wilkins Cloud, Fire, Frost, Rain, River, Storm, Wind

same kind in WordNet Archipelago, Cloud, River

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

same phylum Amber, Clay, Dream, Placebo, Possession, Solitude, Tinnitus, Winter, Knowing Trust, The Shared Cell

same dominant organ Clay, Faith, Fear, Patience, Prophecy, Resonance (second reading), Silence, Tinnitus, Trance

Genome

stillness also in Eternity, Frost, Hesychology
gathering
depth also in Diamond
mirror
sediment also in Erosion

III In the world

Echoes

a mountain lake doubling its peaks
Walden Pond
the shrunken Aral Sea
a pollen core drawn from a lake floor

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	nidi
symmetry	dendritic
organization	solitary
silhouette	sac
scale	microscopic
proportion	even latent
growth	faceted
articulation	imbricate latent
openness	lattice
skeleton	exoskeleton latent
locomotion	sessile
pattern	gradient latent
coloration	countershaded
substance	crystal
surface	frosted
palette	oxblood
luminosity	none
transparency	translucent latent
gesture	sinks
unity	unmarked latent
modality	unmarked latent
causation	material latent
determinacy	fraying latent
fusion	nested
anomaly	knotted
graft	mirrors
technique	engraving
viewpoint	below
value	unmarked latent
balance	top heavy latent
density	graded detail latent
rhythm	unmarked latent
saturation	unmarked latent
appendages	bladders
anchor (body)	a geode cut open, its cavity lined with crystal points
anchor (detail)	a silk cocoon, an oval case of wound threads around an insect pupa

Sources

François-Alphonse Forel, Le Léman: monographie limnologique (1892–1904)
Stephen A. Forbes, The Lake as a Microcosm (1887)
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, A Treatise on Limnology, Volume I (1957)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), chapter The Ponds
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859), on the dispersal of freshwater life by birds

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