a founder of the codex

Mimesis

Similimorpha reddens·the Returning Moth

From Latin similis, like, Greek morphe, form, and Latin reddere, to give back; a form that gives back what it sees.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Linkimage schema
Class: Outputits trompe-l'oeil
Niche: Consumerother ideas
Mode: Fictionhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: City

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Relation · Wilkins, 1668: Operation · WordNet, 1990: Act · Llull, 1308: F · Imaginative

Returning Moth, the whole specimen — Plate XXXV. Similimorpha reddens, the whole specimen.

Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.

We become what we copy, and we copy what we see others want.

behavior Settles beside whatever it watches and slowly takes on its pattern, until the two can no longer be told apart.

provocation

Which of your desires did you first see in someone else?

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 Mimesis — Fig. 1. Kernel
Speaking likeness
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Making a likeness of something lets the likeness stand in for it, show it and teach it.^{1, 3}
drawn as: speaking likeness · view: cast

Boundary of Mimesis — Fig. 2. Boundary
Picture plane
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from the thing itself by the gap that keeps a copy a copy; close the gap and there is no likeness, only a second thing.²
drawn as: picture plane · view: pinned

Intake of Mimesis — Fig. 3. Intake
Life model
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on a model, a person, a gesture or a world, watched closely enough to be taken in.¹
drawn as: life model · view: pinned

Mechanism of Mimesis — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Squaring up
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It selects what it watches and carries it into another medium, voice, paint, gesture or skin, keeping the relations and changing the matter.³
drawn as: squaring up · view: at work

Output of Mimesis — Fig. 5. Output
Trompe-l'oeil
❦ dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives copies that can be learned from, believed, desired or mistaken for their model.^{1, 5}
drawn as: trompe-l'oeil · view: detached

Dispersal of Mimesis — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Triangular desire
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It spreads the way imitation spreads, children copying adults and rivals copying each other's desires.⁴
drawn as: triangular desire · view: magnified

Decay of Mimesis — Fig. 7. Decay
Simulacrum
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It cannot reach what has no model, and it slides into deception, rivalry or the empty copy of a copy.^{2, 4}
drawn as: simulacrum · view: cross section

II Meaning associations

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Entanglement, Reflection

same kind in Wilkins Lullaby, Pointillism

same kind in WordNet Geomancy, Pointillism, Ritual, Knowing Trust

same kind in Llull Apophenia, Dream, Symmetry, Afterlistening, Poetry

same phylum Apophenia, Archipelago, Entanglement, Love, Resonance (second reading), Symbol, Shared Breath, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading)

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

Genome

likeness
representation
imitation also in Echolalia
desire
model

III In the world

Echoes

a viceroy butterfly wearing the pattern of a monarch
a child learning a word by repeating it
a painted window mistaken for a real one
fashions that spread by imitation

IV Record

How it was drawn

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

axis	value
book	mycelia
symmetry	helical
organization	chained
silhouette	globular
scale	hand
proportion	sheared latent
growth	grafted
articulation	imbricate latent
openness	lattice
skeleton	exoskeleton latent
locomotion	gliding latent
pattern	plain latent
coloration	nuptial
substance	obsidian
surface	pleated
palette	bone
luminosity	points
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	splits
unity	fragment latent
modality	possible latent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	doubled
fusion	seam
anomaly	larger inside
graft	arches
technique	engraving
viewpoint	three quarter
value	flat latent
balance	top heavy latent
density	unmarked latent
rhythm	unmarked latent
saturation	unmarked latent
appendages	comb rows
anchor (body)	an aurora, hanging curtains of coloured light
anchor (detail)	a cave swiftlet's nest, a cup of hardened saliva fixed to rock

Sources

Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 4
Plato, Republic, book X
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (1946)
René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961)
Henry Walter Bates, on mimicry among Amazonian butterflies (1862)

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