I love this friendly jab at Flaubert from Nietzsche “On ne peut penser et écrire qu’assis - One cannot think and write except when seated (G. Flaubert).
There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.”
Let's imagine one note as a point on a plane, then an interval (2 notes) as a line connecting those notes. Next we have a chord (3 notes) and we get a triangle. By inverting the notes of the chord (135, 351 etc) we get a ring that representd different triangle shapes. Let's go into third dimension by adding one more note, thus a 4 chord can represent a pyramid.. you could also stay in 2D and represent a square etc.. by modulating and changing the tonal center you can move around the canvas or in space.. representing different data structures.. the horizontal movement would animate the structure as well!
"How to talk about books you haven't read" by Pierre Bayard is another interesting book on this subject.
I presume Derrida is not much liked around here but this excerpt is pure gold from the Derrida documentary https://youtu.be/tdumO88JMxw:
(Derrida shows his library to the interviewer)
"I haven't read all the books that are here"
"But you've read most of them?
"No, no ... three of four... but I've read those four really, really well."
related but off-topic:
Would it be nice if we could just go meta and share newsletters as "self-updating" bookmarks on something like pinboard(just a happy user here)? Next step - implementing machine-learning so that we have consistent static types. Tags are great but after a while I feel users forget them after a while and personally its a cognitive load on my side to make data structures of tags in my head. The second layer could be personal tags so that we have a more dynamic view. Is there something like this?
There is a wonderfull joke in talmud when two rabbis argue about some problem. One says: Let's call Jehova and ask him directly! So Jehova comes but the other rabbi tells him: God go away, you did your thing now let us wise men discuss about this. God says oh my god you are right and he leaves.
German is very suitable for abstract thinking because you can form compound words with ease and put the function at the end of the sentence. These compound words are hard to translate (aufhebung - sublation is a famous example).
Hegel wrote about this in his Logic. German is like a different programming paradigm compared to English.
I feel somewhat similar.. on a side note Hegel's way of thinking is very "algorhythmical". For example the art of the metaobject protocol explores common lisp in a similar way as Hegel explores the absolute spirit. Hegel is a macrologist par excellance!
“This concern with aim or results, with differentiating and passing judgement on various thinkers is therefore an easier task than it might seem. For instead of getting involved in the real issue, this kind of activity is always away beyond it; instead of tarrying with it, and losing itself in it, “this kind of knowing is forever grasping at something new; it remains essentially preoccupied with itself instead of being preoccupied with the real issue and surrendering to it. To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all.”
Excerpt From: G. W. F. Hegel. “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Oxford University Press.