a founder of the codex

Weightlessness

Abaria cadens·the Floating Fall

From Greek abares, without weight, and Latin cadens, falling, a thing that floats because it is always falling.

Level
Conceptorganism
Phylum
Verticalityimage schema
Class
Kernelits free fall
Niche
Extremophileabsence
Mode
Techniquehow it keeps existing
Stage
Matureindividuated
Status
Living
Habitat
Machine

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Matter in General · Wilkins, 1668: Motion · WordNet, 1990: State · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Floating Fall, the whole specimen
Plate LXVIII. Abaria cadens, the whole specimen.

A body falling freely with everything around it weighs nothing, and minds lifted in rapture report the same lightness.

A body that falls with everything around it floats free of its weight, and a rapt mind can find the same lightness.

behavior It drifts in slow turns in any direction, and it drops heavy the moment anything pushes back on it.

provocation

What holds you up, and what would you do if it fell along with you?

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

Kernel of Weightlessness

Fig. 1. Kernel

Free fall

❦ dominant organ

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

In a vacuum all bodies fall at the same rate whatever their mass, so a body falling with everything around it presses on nothing and floats.1, 2

drawn as: free fall · view: series

Boundary of Weightlessness

Fig. 2. Boundary

Neutral buoyancy

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

It is set apart from floating in water, where buoyancy holds a body up. A diver can hang level in a pool, and the inner ear still feels which way is down.3

drawn as: neutral buoyancy · view: in situ

Intake of Weightlessness

Fig. 3. Intake

Parabolic arc

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

It feeds on falling, in a leap, a thrown stone, an aircraft flying a parabola, or an orbit, which is a fall that always misses the earth.1

drawn as: parabolic arc · view: at work

Mechanism of Weightlessness

Fig. 4. Mechanism

Ear stones

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

In a fall every part of a body moves together and leans its weight on nothing. In the inner ear the otoliths, calcite grains resting on hair cells, cease to bend them, and the brain loses its sense of down.3, 2

drawn as: ear stones · view: transparent

Output of Weightlessness

Fig. 5. Output

Levitation

What does it make possible, visible or knowable?

It makes the body feel as light as spirit. Teresa of Ávila wrote that in rapture her body grew so light it seemed to lose all its weight.4

drawn as: levitation · view: pressed

Dispersal of Weightlessness

Fig. 6. Dispersal

Magic flight

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

It travels into belief as the flight of shamans and saints, and into sleep as the dream of rising from the ground.5, 4

drawn as: magic flight · view: microscope

Decay of Weightlessness

Fig. 7. Decay

Bird legs

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

Bodies wear in it. Bone and muscle left without load waste away, fluid rises into the face and thins the legs, and a crew returns unsteady, relearning how to stand.3

drawn as: bird legs · view: detached

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 Resonance, Resonance (second reading)

same kind in WordNet Possession, Presence, Solitude, Threshold, Tinnitus, Trance, The Shared Cell

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

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

same dominant organ Archipelago, Entanglement, Entelechy, Eternity, Geomancy, Qualia, Salt, Syllable, Symmetry, Vertigo, Volition, Knowing Trust, Hesychology

Genome

III In the world

Echoes

  • a crew floating in an orbiting station
  • the top of a child's leap
  • a saint lifted in rapture
  • a dream of flying

IV Record

How it was drawn

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

axisvalue
booknidi
symmetryhelical
organizationnested
silhouettewinged
scalehand
proportiongraded latent
growthregenerated
articulationtelescoping latent
opennesssolid latent
skeletonwoody
locomotiondrifting latent
patternreticulate
colorationcryptic latent
substancecalcite
surfaceiridescent
paletteindigo
luminositysheen
transparencyopaque latent
gesturesinks
unityfragment latent
modalitycontingent latent
causationfinal latent
determinacydissolving latent
fusionseam
anomalylarger inside
graftstair
techniquegouache
viewpointbelow
valueunmarked latent
balancetop heavy latent
densitygraded detail
rhythmclustered latent
saturationmuted latent
appendagesrhizoids
anchor (body)a pitcher plant, a hooded tubular leaf holding a pool inside
anchor (detail)a comb jelly, an oval glassy body with eight rows of beating iridescent combs

Sources

  1. Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638), on falling bodies and the parabola
  2. Albert Einstein, Über das Relativitätsprinzip und die aus demselben gezogenen Folgerungen (Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik, 1907)
  3. Jay C. Buckey Jr., Space Physiology (2006)
  4. Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565), chapter 20, on rapture
  5. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951), on magical flight

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