Branches Branching: Alternative Hierarchies?

 

I don’t think that last month’s blogpost was the last word on a visualisation for the structure of Objectivism. A major concern is that the animated model was too linear. Peikoff, in his lecture (Understanding Objectivism — Lecture five, “The Hierarchy of Objectivism”) talks about the hierarchical structure requiring some room for contextual re-arranging: 

The rationalist hates the idea of options; he wants everything to be like geometry. An empiricist hates anything that isn’t an option; he wants any order of any kind as he feels. The key to Objectivism here is a logically necessary structure in principle, plus many options in detail and application.  

Well, a visualised structure has to be somewhat geometrical, yet it doesn’t have to be such a geometrically fixed model as presented last month. 

One interesting aspect of using a loxodrome spiral with two reciprocal ‘golden’ shapes (as seen more smoothly in last August’s Metaphysical Axioms Animated) is that the spiral could continue in a loop so that the contained shapes may alternate between being ‘dominant’ and ‘subservient’. 

This would usher in a contextual choice “in detail and application” which moves the model away from an over-rationalistic linearity. 

More integrated irregularity next month…

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