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Discover Da Vinci’s Stars & Explore the Essence of Space in Corten Caisson’s New Book ‘HEARTH’
By Corten Caisson
“In the realm of philosophical inquiry, where the boundaries of perception and understanding blur, author Corten Caisson takes readers on a captivating exploration in the pages of their latest book, “Hearth.” Released on April 5, 2024, “Hearth” is a thought-provoking odyssey that challenges conventional wisdom and reshapes our conception of space, the cosmos, and their intrinsic relationship.” – Mark Anderson
Introspection
In the art of philosophy, it is customary to start with a question. This question establishes the foundation of philosophy, which is the realization that “I did not know what I thought I knew.” A new perspective is found and reasoned to be more true and freer than what was previously thought. The simple question I am raising: What is space? And you may think, “Oh, I know space. It is out there”, or “I know space. It is defined by four walls and a roof or by a pen and a brush.” But what kind of space am I asking about? Although there is understood to be a lot of different kinds of space, understanding that there exists a separation, or an absence of material is a singular idea.
However, it is not the answer I am proposing. First, I must directly raise a second question. Why is it that we can only think of space as something that is divided by its subjects, which are required for it to be recognized as examples of space but not space itself? And I mean particularly the division of space that occurs between the subjects of art and science. In the arts, there are kinds of space that are created through a medium, be it anything – plaster, marble, paint, ink, etc. – moved by human intellect. In the sciences, there is really one kind of space, understood as “outer” space, which has complicated assumptions and hypotheses based on the imperial observations of the universe. It is the absence of material and yet not the absence of energy. Artistic space is also the absence of material, which gives rise to its articulation and didactic understanding all the same.
Its perceived difference is that it is formed by human intellect while scientific space, if formed by faith or by an opinion, but what human intellect is also formed by, is also either a faith or an opinion. So why is it we can only think of space as examples of space but cannot define what space itself is? Space, like virtue or the good itself, has not changed nor will it ever change or be defined. It is because we do not know these things formally, and only when combined with material can we see that formal thing that allows us to recognize it for what it is. Like virtue and vice, space would not be recognizable as space without the material to make itself known.
We understand the examples of virtue, examples of space, and even examples of color, but that form itself is unknown to us all. A perception is a deliberate choice based on one’s own opinion and reason to take the place in which they decided to sit or stand and look out into the unknown. Faith is beyond reasonable doubt and therefore doesn’t require it. Opinion is belief based on perception and what is good is what is reasonable, but our perceptions change, and we all come to that foundation of philosophy which is the realization that “I do not know what I thought I knew.”
In Plato’s Republic Book VI, Socrates divides the world into two sections. On understanding, he says it is intermediate between opinion and reason, and between these, he divides the whole of everything into the visible entity and the intelligible entity – that which can only be seen and not thought, and that which can only be thought and not seen. He then divides each again in the same ratio based on the clarity of what can be known about them. The entities are divided into the forms themselves, and the objects begot by these forms. It is a separation of everything based on whether it is material or of it is energy.
Our modern perception of space does not seem to fit so cleanly into Socrates’s dichotomy. And yet, it does in the sense that space, as the absence of material, cannot be seen; it can only be thought. It is only in our perceptions of energy, as something that is un-unified and in part begot by material, where we begin to lose clarity. This separation, between material and energy, would mean that space is energy; and that this energy is not begotten by material, but the material is begotten by space. The universe, as an intelligent being, has its own reason. If its space is its energy and its reason, space is the invisible energy substance which forms all matter. This is how the answer to my question is simple; space is reason. I may not know what reason itself is, but I do know that space, as both energy and the intelligible section of the universe, shares in its form. As in we are and everything is created for some reason, but I will not know what the reason. I can only apply faith.
Retrospection
“In ancient and modern times, the store of architectural forms has often been portrayed as mainly conditioned by and arising from the material, yet by regarding construction as the essence of architecture we, while believing to liberate it from false accessories, have thus placed it in fetters, Architecture, like its great teacher, nature, should choose and apply its material according to the laws conditioned by nature, yet should it not also make the form and character of its creations dependent on the ideas embodied in them, and not on the material. If the most suitable material is selected for their embodiment, the ideal expression of a building will of course gain beauty and meaning by the material appearance as a natural symbol. Yet when allied with antiquarian-ism, this materialistic way of thinking has led to strange and fruitless speculations and overlooked the most important influences on the development of art.” Gottfried Semper is a German architect who wrote on the origins of architecture in his book, The Four Elements of Architecture. In his efforts to find these common elements of architecture across history, he begins to discuss our relationship with nature. Architecture, he says, like everything else, is born from fire.
“The first sign of human settlement and rest after the hunt, the battle, and wandering in the desert is today, as when the first men lost paradise, the setting up of the fireplace and the lighting of the reviving, warming, and food preparing flame. Around the hearth, the first groups assembled; around it, the first alliances formed; around it, the first rude religious concepts were put into the customs of a cult. Throughout all phases of society, the hearth formed that sacred focus around which the whole took order and shape. It is the first and most important, the moral element of architecture.…”
There is an ancient phenomenon that, too, divides the world into its material and its energy. The ancient creation story of the Maya people lays the foundation for the understanding of how the gods created the universe. The Code of Kings According to the work done by those individuals who have studied the ancient Maya, in this case, Linda Shele and Peter Mathews, who wrote The Code of Kings, the golden ratio was “the module from which all Creation was generated.” The gods used it to lay out the cosmos:
Its four sides (or sections)
Its four cornerings
Its measurings
Its four stakings
Its doubling-over cord measurement
Its stretching cord measurement
Its womb sky
Its womb earth
Four sides
Four corners as it is said
The creation poem is a description of the method by which the Maya would use a simple cord to align the proportions of their creations with that of the universe. Stated in the creation poem are its two entities, Earth and sky. The last two lines of the creation poem-“the four sides, the four corners, as is said”-are the envelope verses that make it an anaphora, meaning to carry up or back. This verse is referring to the whole of creation, the universe, as a constant and specifically a cosmological constant equal to phi. The ancient Greek as well thought of the universe as divided into two sections by a golden mean.
Timaeus
What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world, we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to probability we may attain but no further
Socrates: Excellent, Timaeus, I like your manner of approaching the subject- -proceed, Timaeus: Why did the Creator make the world? He was good, and therefore not jealous, and being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be like himself. Wherefore he set in order the visible world, which he found in disorder. Now he who is the best could only create the fairest; and reflecting that of visible things the intelligent is superior to the unintelligent, he put intelligence in soul and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best and fairest work in the order of nature, and the world became a living soul through the providence of God In the likeness of what animal was the world made?-@that is the third question. The form of the perfect animal was a whole, and contained all intelligible beings, and the visible animal, made after the pattern of this, included all visible creatures. The division of Plato’s two entities in book VI is the same division of the two entities of the ancient world, “Earth” and “sky” or “Earth and “fire.”
The correlation between sky and fire is that of only energy. The composition of the atom remains consistent throughout, from atom to planets and stars and the universe. One entity is bound together and begotten by the other. In this perspective, the composition of the two entities is then also consistent with the mind and creations of mankind as well as those described by Plato as the intelligible and visible entities. The two entities of the ancient world are then more fully understood as the two entities which make up the composition and understanding of the whole of the universe and not the literal “Earth” and “sky” but all material and the whole of energy. If the universe is considered from this ancient perspective, the universe is then understood as a living being, where energy is begotten by reason. The two entities of the universe have now become Earth and sky/fire, visible and intelligible, material and energy, protons/neutrons and electrons/ photons (lepton), medium and space, opinion and reason, and seen and thought.
Re-inspection
An attempt to start from the beginning with a simple question: Was it first the idea to construct a shelter that eventually brought the domestication of fire? Or was it the domestication of fire that brought about the shelter? Is it ink that is intelligible? Or is it the space created by the ink that allows it to be articulate? The question is, Is it a space-forming medium, or is it a medium-forming space? The possibility of space as energy and reason is a reconsideration of our understanding of energy. In common knowledge, energy is dis-unified and divided into eight parts. The four forces are gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force. The four energies are electro- magnetic, heat, light, and kinetic. All of these fall under the family of Lepton, except for one- gravity. Its understanding in a colloquial sense is the force that attracts a body toward another body containing mass. Intentional or not, it has placed upon our understanding of energy, the ability of inanimate brute matter, to possess power.
Power, however, as we have reasoned, belongs to the intelligible entity. Gravity then is not a symptom of mass but is energy itself and one end of polarity. Lepton is the invisible energy substance that makes up all of space. It is both light and space, photons and electrons, and the “missing’ mass of the universe. (I say “missing mass” of the universe because electrons have mass and are not considered in the calculations of the mass of the universe, which gives rise to the hopeless belief in dark matter. Dark energy is the energy that is “causing” the acceleration of the universe, which we know is just energy or space itself.) The polarity of energy can be understood by its universal acceleration and its force of gravity- one moving in one direction while the other is moving in the opposite direction.
The difference, however, is in our perception of energy and where it comes from. For example, the Earth is polarized from the conductive material within it, like two pressure points, forcing the Earth to bulge and spin on its axis. It is the cause for solar winds and the uniformity of the force of gravity across the Earth, The poles location is slightly closer to the core of the Earth, however, it is caused by energy and not the cause for energy. The perception of gravity, which is thought to be begotten by material, rationalizes the belief that because the poles are closer to the Earth’s core where gravity is strongest, this is the answer to the question, Why is gravity stronger at the poles? This rationalization, however, I hope you see as a circular reasoning and answers the question with its own logic.
The reason why the poles are closer to the Earth’s core is because of energy and not the cause for energy. This logic, on the other hand, answers the question as to how the poles got closer to the Earth’s core to begin with. Another rationalization I found is in the phenomena of snowflakes. A liquid in this case, water- takes on the shape of its container. On Earth or in space, a snowflake is always different than the next, each branch in the golden ratio to the other. It is suggested that energy cannot be unified without the finding of the cosmological constant, and yet, ancient sources have clearly suggested that the acceleration of the universe is the golden ratio, 1.61803. A constant increase in value over time creates an acceleration that is an infinite equilibrium or cosmological constant. A is to B as B is to A+B, making a constant infinite golden ratio.
This proportion of nature is in the helix of our DNA, the rhythm of our heartbeat, and the composition of our bodies. It is the mathematical sequence in the spirals of our storms, planets, and Milky Way galaxy. It is the perceived harmony of nature, found in the farthest stretches of the universe, to hurricanes, waves, flowers, and seashells. If all of energy were to be divided into a mean, would that mean not also be its rate of change? Energy could then be understood to us in this way as well through its acceleration which is found in the proportions of nature.
For the first time, I have placed the names of the stars in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” by overlaying onto the painting in exact proportion, the Orion Nebula mirrored. In the “Savior of the World,” He has in his hand the world. A 1.61803-inch line drawn from Bellatrix to Betelgeuse is divided in the golden ratio at one inch. This intersection draws through the collection of three stars called Meissa, the flame nebula outside Alnitak and the tip of the pinky of Jesus. As the observer, we are on the outside of the universe looking in, so the stars are mirrored- -reading from left to right, Bellatrix, Meissa, and Betelgeuse.
A constructed golden spiral off the initial intersection draws through the intersection of Meissa and the Flame Nebula, along with the outside of the sphere, the edge of the robe of Jesus, and through the intersection of the initial line, with one of the center lines. The intersection of the center line, with that of the initial line, and the constructed golden spiral is constructed with an intentional message that is the idea of “A Golden Universe.”
Order Book
Story submitted by Corten Caisson. The World Art News (WAN) is not liable for the content of this publication. All statements and views expressed herein are opinions only. Act at your own risk. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission. © The World Art News
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