Chapter 6
TELEOLOGY
2A NAME for the process of OBSERVING consciously, or absorbing subconsciously, from the OUTSIDE INWARD so that one may do from the inside outward is TELEOLOGY. When finally solving from the inside out, the teleologic perspective will be universal, and the equation of performance will be:
3 Degree of satisfaction encompassment=degree of factor inclusion.
4 Let us symbolize teleology as XI, like a bow tie. This is a neat and specific equation mark, combining the symbol of symmetrical expansion (the ‘‘X,’’ multiplication, or ‘‘times’’ mark) with the equation mark ( = ). It is currently more fitting as an equation symbol than the old equation mark because we nowknow that parallel lines, or conditions, are impossible. Moreover, quasi-parallel lines, never coming in contact, are procreatively sterile. The ‘‘=’’ is, then, inaccurate as a sign to link integrators and product:.
5 (2X3 = 6 theoretical)
6 (2X3 X 6 factual)
7 Our teleologic symbol [Xl represents, by its loose-ended ‘‘X’’ inclusion and by the conjunction of its ends, a finite radial limit of the segment of inclusion and the segment of conclusion, like an hour glass on its side. It is offered, then, as the logical successor of the familiar equation symbol for use in any consideration of the now apparently expanding universe.
8 A Teleologic Demonstration
9 I see an apple.
1011The light of the sun is reflected from the surface of an apple, after the occurrence of the spectroscopic action of light segregation through the medium of crystals on the surface of the apple.
12Not all of the energy ray tones are reflected, however. Those that are useful to the apple are absorbed by it, while the remainder, i.e., the non-useful, or non-digestible, or, more specifically, non- chemically combinable ray tones are reflected from the surface of the apple through the air to and through the lens of the human eye, where they are analyzed by the retina and telephotographed to the brain of the beholder.
13Incidentally the light that the apple gives off is a negative, that is, the opposite of the light complementary to the growth phenomenon ‘‘apple.’’ It is not one of the chemical apple’s actual constituents. This is something like the phenomenon of the camera film negative except that the latter is more honest than the eyes for the eye reverses light and shadow instead of properly appraising them as does the camera. In printing, the black and white of the film have to be reversed in order to represent the illusion of the apple as the eye sees it. Many apples are probably blue, having taken blue from the spectrum, but the eye, taking up the rejected red, ‘‘sees’’ the apple as red.
14Whether or not the eye sees a negative or a positive of the apple, light absorption and reflection are mechanical considerations because neither life nor mind activity is involved until the essence of the picture has been articulated in the ‘‘brain’’ and has been automatically referred to the memory filing department (the system of which is even more complicated than the world-wide Bertillon system of finger-print identification) for comparison with all of the apple experiences of the ‘‘see-er.’’ The new picture of ‘‘apple’’ is laid out on the table for comparison with the whole reference file by the executive officer, ‘‘brain,’’ who never sees the phantom captain although under his permanent orders to lay out the file in the captain’s outer study. Then ‘‘brain’’ retires through the front door, closes it behind him, and the phantom captain enters from his inner sanctum to peruse the exhibit.
15 If interested at all—generally he is not—the captain considers the progression of apple phenomena, as indicated by the pictures in the file, and decides that the latest addition is a better or worse apple, i.e., it is an apple that would, or would not, be useful as fuel for his ship, in the cleansing process of his machinery, as a missile, or as bait. Having decided ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no,’’ he leaves a message for ‘‘brain’’ beside the exposed file and retires.
16 ‘‘Brain’’ re-enters, scans the message, returns the file including the latest apple picture back to the memory chamber, and executes any order the captain may have left.
17 If the execution of that order calls for a signaling operation through the sound detonating mechanism, the executive officer proceeds to pump a little air into the air storage chambers by the hydraulic inflation and deflation of the flexible tubular members of the wall structure of the pump bladder. When a high fluid pressure is exerted in the tubes, the air chamber expands in the form of a globular Japanese lantern with spiny, spiral, horizontal arches. As soon as the liquid pressure is released, the air chamber is forced to contract by the spring leaf diaphragm against which it was expanded.
18 ‘‘Brain,’’ thus able to inflate and deflate the air storage, first sculpturally arranges the passage to the orifice of the raw fuel receiving hatch and shapes the orifice as well as the wall structures of the tubes leading from the orifice to the air chambers; then, by an adjustable mutable tongue cone, which proportionately occupies the orifice and has a tip which is free to vibrate gently, ‘‘brain’’ causes a continuity pattern of sound control to issue forth with high variation frequency. The segmental units of sound are known as words, which might be—in the present illustration—arranged by the executive officer as a series of seven air syllabic emissions: ‘‘I’d love to eat that ap-ple!’’
19 This process, which has required some time for its description due to its complexity and necessarily detailed efficiency, actually consumes but a fraction of a second in its operation.
20 It has been described to make clear this essential point of teleology: The phenomenon of the original inclusion was a light analysis consideration. The analysis of light was transmitted through a complete telegraphing system to headquarters where an abstraction of its effect occurred. After this, an abstract order was issued by the phantom captain to ‘‘brain’’ which subsequently articulated itself in a sound wave phenomenon with a special directionary implication which the apple, in itself, did not possess. In short, a light phenomenon was converted into a sound phenomenon.
2122The process could more easily have been described in terms of lips, mouth, bronchi, lungs, breasts, et cetera, but the layman has been so confounded by tradition as, inseparably, to correlate the names of physio-biological parts with ethics, morals and sex frustrations that, to evoke a true perspective upon the wonder of the phantom captain and his ship, it seemed best to use purely inanimate mechanical terms. Even on inspecting so scientifically and intelligently evolved a demonstration as a glass woman, man is hampered in his appreciation of the revealed mechanical and chemical miracle.
23Now, the phantom captain may have found, in his memory file of ‘‘apple,’’ a record of how badly apples had affected his ship’s mechanism some years past, which might have prompted a command not to eat the apple. But before issuing the command he might have drifted into reflecting on his childhood maladies, which were often representative of bad reciprocity of the ships mechanical parts, and then have realized that, for a number of recent years, he had had no mechanical disynchronizations. This realization might have occasioned rejoicement in the pleasurable nature of his captaincy of late. Feeling quite radiant, as a result of this reflection, he probably would have wished to share his radiance with another, wherefore he would have left for his executive officer, ‘‘brain,’’ this message for Mabel,—‘‘Let’s go out and get drunk.’’
24Such a command could scarcely be directly apparent as having been provoked by an apple’s reflected sunlight. This would be an indirect effect of the apple. It is a better illustration of teleology than was the first example which arrived directly at the conclusion, ‘‘I’d love to eat that apple.’’ In the second example, a sensorial reflection inclusion, passing through the abstract center of the captain’s study (it was the captain’s personal debate) demonstrated itself subsequently in an articulation quite indistinguishably correlative to the item of detonation or the original causal phenomenon, i.e., the energy of a star, the sun, bouncing off an apple. Nevertheless, the principle of teleology implies that the adequacy and effect of conclusion are directly proportional to the degree of ramification and penetration of the original inclusion. In other words, the energy applied to the end effect and satisfaction of the reflex would be directly proportional to the care and energy invested in looking at the apple.
25 The words ‘‘telegraph’’ and ‘‘telephone’’ have quite naturally been derived from teleology. The process they represent mechanically abstracts the original, with the minds of operators interpolating at abstract stages to produce an ultimately sensorial result. (‘‘Telefac- ture’’ may well supplant ‘‘manufacture’’)
26 To illustrate the process in ‘‘telegraph,’’ let us suppose an original phenomenon such as the death of Uncle John.
27 A telegram is sent to a florist by someone, the message being transmitted as a dot-and-dash interruption on an electrical circuit. The dot-and-dash symbols are converted at the receiving end of the wire into ink symbols, codified with the dot-and-dash system, on a piece of yellow paper. This piece of paper is transmitted to a florist who sends flowers to #37 Bond Street,—flowers but that morning growing in a field only to be suddenly severed from their roots, covered with waxed paper, packed in a cardboard box, and later delivered, at #37 Bond Street, into a receptable of water standing next to a black box in which has been deposited a discarded human machine. The telegram sender, rueful of death, caused further death to be a paying business, an odd result from the original cause.
28 The means of provoking the effect by the cause was not merely a mechanico-electrical process; more important were the phantom captains who performed the function of ‘‘interpolation’’ at the various receiving instruments by transforming the dots and dashes not only into ink symbols but into further botanical death.
29 The essence of this phenomenon is that the interpolating function is one that no machine will ever perform. The art of teleologic design is, then, one of delicacy of attunement in the interpolation of every seemingly casual event of life into non-haphazard objective instruments,—whether written words, medical prescriptions or pencils, the function of the instrument being, in turn, the harmonic abetment of the trends intuitively to be detected by the teleologist through the keyhole of his ‘‘own’’ phantom captain’s study. Teleology will have more and more significance as the teleologist carries on the vast task of exploring and including all factors making up man’s universal status quo.
30 The consumption and digestion of facts and statistics is somewhat like eating and chewing hay and thistles. There is nourishment in them in their raw state, to be sure, but a cow is needed to convert them into milk. Likewise the average human mind needs an intermediary—a teleologist—to convert vital factors into digest- ibles for his objective use.
31 To the student of teleologic design, particularly as applied to shelter service, we offer a ‘‘cowing’’ of the vital factors of man’s estate at this moment of ken. Only by awareness of this estate can the teleologist interpolate therefrom an adequate industrial design of world encompassing shelter service, which will be so utilitarianly adequate and harmonic as to insure man’s irrepressible appetence for such shelter service’s industrial reproduction.
32 At the outset, certain new words must be introduced, among which are vitalistics to replace the dead word statistics, and mobilata to supersede data. These substitutions are necessary in order to incorporate a TIME element and to make allowance for the constant adjustment of figures into the meanings of wo rds. Statistics are static, Time-less, the blinding dust of death. Vitalistics and mobilata, on the other hand, are appropriately used in connection with a cosmic inventory because scientific events and corrections may cause an one hundred per cent amplification or refinement in our cosmic inventory even before the manuscript reciting the items can be printed.