a founder of the codex

Symbol

Symbolaria transferens·the Translating Bivalve

From Greek symbolon, a token broken in two whose halves fit, and Latin transferens, carrying across, for a matched pair that carries meaning from one side to the other.

Level: Conceptorganism
Phylum: Linkimage schema
Class: Mechanismits metaphor
Niche: Symbionta partner
Mode: Referencehow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Archive

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Communication of Ideas · Wilkins, 1668: Discourse · WordNet, 1990: Communication · Llull, 1308: K · Instrumentative

Translating Bivalve, the whole specimen — Plate LXI. Symbolaria transferens, the whole specimen.

A symbol carries meaning from one thing to another by a bond its users share, so it works as a translation, and the meaning it carries grows richer with each crossing.

A thing becomes a symbol when a shared meaning crosses through it.

behavior Holds its two halves shut on what it carries, opens them to whoever brings the matching half, and gains a layer of lustre each time it is passed on.

provocation

Which object near you means more to you than it would to a stranger, and what crosses through it?

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

Kernel of Symbol — Fig. 1. Kernel
Broken token
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
One thing can stand for another by a rule its users share. The Greek symbolon was a token broken in two, and each half stood for the bond between those who held them.^{1, 2}
drawn as: broken token · view: cross section

Boundary of Symbol — Fig. 2. Boundary
Literal sense
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is defined against the literal thing, which means itself. A dove is a bird, and it becomes peace where a shared reading makes it so.²
drawn as: literal sense · view: pressed

Intake of Symbol — Fig. 3. Intake
Common ground
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on experience held in common, birth, harvest, mourning, a war, the things a group has lived through together and can point back to.⁵
drawn as: common ground · view: pinned

Mechanism of Symbol — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Metaphor
❦ dominant organ
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Its work is a transfer. It carries meaning from a thing to an idea and from one mind or language to another, keeping something constant on the way, as a translation does.²
drawn as: metaphor · view: detached

Output of Symbol — Fig. 5. Output
Surplus of meaning
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives meaning in layers. One figure gathers many senses at once, and each reading finds another, which is why, in Ricoeur's phrase, the symbol gives rise to thought.^{4, 5}
drawn as: surplus of meaning · view: cross section

Dispersal of Symbol — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Motif
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels by retelling, in stories, rites, flags and images, and it grows as it goes, since each new user adds a meaning of their own.^{2, 5}
drawn as: motif · view: magnified

Decay of Symbol — Fig. 7. Decay
Cliché
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
Repeated too often it wears flat into a cliché, a figure people use while seeing nothing through it, and it leaves behind the dead metaphors of everyday speech.³
drawn as: cliché · 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 Echolalia, Glossolalia, Pointillism, Syllable, Babelhum, Poetry

same kind in Wilkins Echolalia, Glossolalia, Prophecy, Syllable, Babelhum, Tongue Horizon, Poetry

same kind in WordNet Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Glossolalia, Lullaby, Music, Prophecy, Syllable, Babelhum, Poetry

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

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

same dominant organ Chimera, Dream, Fire, Love, Lullaby, Metamorphosis, Music, Presence, Resonance, Ritual, Storm, Winter, Rushmaker, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Gazeroot (second reading), Commemorative Revision, The Swing Door, Foresilence, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry, Subtractive Phenomenology

Genome

convention
transfer
translation
layering
sharing

III In the world

Echoes

the dove as peace
a wedding ring
a flag at half mast
the Greek symbolon, a token broken between two friends

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	mycelia
symmetry	fractal
organization	segmented
silhouette	filiform
scale	hand
proportion	compressed latent
growth	grafted
articulation	imbricate latent
openness	hollow latent
skeleton	exoskeleton latent
locomotion	burrowing latent
pattern	reticulate latent
coloration	disruptive latent
substance	paper
surface	ribbed
palette	oilslick
luminosity	points
transparency	layered latent
gesture	emits
unity	unmarked latent
modality	contingent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	fraying
fusion	seam
anomaly	scale clash
graft	scaffold
technique	watercolour
viewpoint	above
value	flat latent
balance	cantilevered
density	sparse latent
rhythm	regular latent
saturation	accent latent
appendages	bladders
anchor (body)	an aurora, hanging curtains of coloured light
anchor (detail)	a hailstone cut in half, concentric layers of clear and cloudy ice

Sources

Plato, Symposium (4th century BCE), 191d, on each of us as a symbolon, the matching half of a token
Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, volume 2, Elements of Logic (1932)
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946)
Paul Ricoeur, La symbolique du mal (1960)
Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (1967)

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