Threads: Loose Links

Outline

Introduction

  • What it is

Veiling: Necessary Uncertainty

  • Representing reality: absolute and relative truths
  • Limitations of language, perception, and knowledge

Metaphors of Fabric in Popular Physics Books

  • Rovelli on quantum loop gravity
  • Greene on superstring theory
  • Connecting spacetime and thoughts
  • Probability and uncertainty
  • Threads of thought
  • String theory
  • A tapestry of theory and spacetime
  • Stories as threads
  • Crumpled dimensions as texture
  • Layering perception and reality

Ancient Usage of Thread Metaphors

  • The Fates (Moira), spinning the threads of life and destiny
  • Kairos as thread through a needle
  • Ariadne's string guiding her through the labyrinth
  • Penelope weaving and unweaving the shroud for Laertes

Modern and Postmodern Usage

  • Interaction and dialogic meaning
  • Destiny and the production of truth
  • Potentiality and witness
  • An untruth, woven

Conclusion

  • Weaving and the systematicity of concepts 

Suggestions for Further Inquiry

  • Physics: a deeper look
  • Ontology: Heidegger's Being and Time
  • Anthropology: women, weaving, and social structures
  • Psychology: archetype and myth
  • Revelation and the concept of "the end of time"

Meditation: A Matter of Time

  • On time
  • On transmutation

Benediction

  • On threads
  • On interaction

Works Cited