a founder of the codex

Silence

Tacitaria plena·the Full Quiet

From Latin tacitus, silent, and plenus, full; a silence that is never empty.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Scaleimage schema
Class: Intakeits noise floor
Niche: Decomposerwhat is dead
Mode: Religionhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Archive

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Organic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: Spiritual Action · WordNet, 1990: Cognition · Llull, 1308: G · Sensitive

Full Quiet, the whole specimen — Plate LVI. Tacitaria plena, the whole specimen.

Silence is never the absence of all sound but a frame in which the sounds that louder ones hid can be heard, so it is a way of listening.

Silence is a way of listening, not an absence of sound.

behavior Grows quieter the more closely it is watched, and its surface fills with the faintest marks of what is heard in it.

provocation

Which sound in the room were you not hearing until now?

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 Silence — Fig. 1. Kernel
Room tone
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Silence is never empty; when every sound we make is taken away others are still heard, so silence is a way of listening rather than an absence.³
drawn as: room tone · view: transparent

Boundary of Silence — Fig. 2. Boundary
Cloister
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is kept by a frame, a rest in a score, a minute of silence, the rule of a house; outside the frame the same quiet is only a pause.^{1, 3}
drawn as: cloister · view: transparent

Intake of Silence — Fig. 3. Intake
Noise floor
❦ dominant organ
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on the small sounds that louder ones hide, breath, blood, wind, the hum of a room, and on the ending of every other sound.^{3, 4}
drawn as: noise floor · view: in situ

Mechanism of Silence — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Custody of the tongue
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
By withholding speech and music it turns attention outward to what was always there, or inward to what was waiting.²
drawn as: custody of the tongue · view: cast

Output of Silence — Fig. 5. Output
Pin drop
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It makes audible what was masked, and gives speech its weight, for what is said after it is heard differently.²
drawn as: pin drop · view: pressed

Dispersal of Silence — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Bar rests
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels in rules and gestures that ask for it, the monastery's hours of silence, the minute of silence, the rest written into a score.^{1, 3}
drawn as: bar rests · view: magnified

Decay of Silence — Fig. 7. Decay
Anechoic chamber
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It cannot be total; even in a room built to absorb every echo Cage heard two sounds, his nerves and his blood. Imposed, it becomes censorship and leaves the unsaid behind.³
drawn as: anechoic chamber · view: cross section

II Meaning associations

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Offspring

AfterlisteningLingering Ear, Postaudia expectansby symbiosis

HesychologyStillness Gauge, Hesychometra gradataby succession

ForesilenceJointing Pause, Pausiphonia articulansby symbiosis

Subtractive PhenomenologyLantern of Less, Aphaeresis sensoriaby succession

Food web

feeds its output → the intake of Qualia
Silence makes audible what was masked; Qualia feeds on sensation as it is lived. Quiet is where lived experience can be noticed at all.
homology its kernel resembles the kernel of Qualia
Both say that something is present that a plain description leaves out, the small sounds under the quiet and the felt quality under the account.
feeds its output → the intake of Music
Silence makes audible what was masked and gives what follows its weight; Music feeds on a listener's expectation, which a silence holds open.
feeds the output of Music → its intake
Music makes time audible; Silence feeds on the ending of every other sound, and music's endings are the most shaped of all.
homology its boundary resembles the boundary of Music
Both are kept by a frame, Silence by a rest or a rule, Music by order in ratios and beats. The rest in a score belongs to both.

Kin

same kind in Roget Amber, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Entelechy, Iridescence, Music, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Shared Breath

same kind in Wilkins Faith, Fear, Love, Nostalgia, Reflection, Volition, Knowing Trust, Witnessed Relief, Gazeroot (second reading), The Swing Door

same kind in WordNet Apophenia, Dream, Faith, Memory, Oblivion, Qualia, Volition, Afterlistening, Simultaneous Remembering, Hesychology, Subtractive Phenomenology

same kind in Llull Aura, Awakening, Chimera, Fear, Qualia, Tinnitus, Vertigo, Babelhum, Shared Breath, The Swing Door

same phylum Entropy, Frost, Iridescence, Patience, Sand, Trance, Hesychology

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

Genome

absence
listening also in Resonance (second reading)
frame also in Foresilence
restraint also in Patience
attention also in Afterlistening, Presence, Prophecy, Solitude, Tinnitus

III In the world

Echoes

John Cage's 4′33″
a minute of silence
a monastery at night
the rest in a score

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 3, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	uranographia
symmetry	helical
organization	segmented
silhouette	cage
scale	hand
proportion	swollen
growth	budding
articulation	seamless latent
openness	spongy latent
skeleton	woody latent
locomotion	gliding latent
pattern	gradient latent
coloration	eyespots latent
substance	petal tissue
surface	velvety
palette	meadow
luminosity	none
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	gathers
unity	composite latent
modality	unmarked latent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	dissolving latent
fusion	built of
anomaly	orbiting
graft	none
technique	hatching
viewpoint	profile
value	low key
balance	leaning latent
density	unmarked latent
rhythm	clustered
saturation	muted latent
appendages	lanterns, beaded filaments
anchor (body)	an orchid whose lip is shaped like a lure
anchor (detail)	hoarfrost, feathery ice crystals growing along an edge

Sources

The Rule of Saint Benedict (c. 530), chapter 6, on restraint of speech
Max Picard, The World of Silence (1948)
John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961)
R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World (1977)

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