The Editor's Choice: Archive
Philosophy and Esoterica

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Systemic and Intellectual Infinitums
By Sheridan Lardner
February 2009

     Owing to the innumerable possibilities of the world, there always exists a chance that Montaigne’s long-quested-for certainty can warp into uncertainty. An unexpected element can always enter into a seemingly flawless system of reasoning that, in the first place, did not account for it, and in the second place, did not prevent its entrance. Naturally this disrupts the entire structure. Unlike the neat intangibility of mathematics, true worldly existence lacks in such rules. Those identifiable few are describable only by limited linguistics. Compare to the language of mathematics, which is all encompassing for the discipline of mathematics; anything mathematical can be described with numbers, operations, equations, etc. But consider interpersonal relations amongst mankind. These operations, if the word is allowed its use here, are enacted in the language of words, gestures, and thoughts. Who could use these three elements to fully and comprehensively describe the relationship between two men? It would only be an approximation, although perhaps an accurate one.

     This observation may plunge us into endless chaos; with countless factors to account for, how can any thought, conclusion, or system be sound? Without the rigidity and predictability of a math-like world, who is to say that experience sets any verifiable precedent for the future? Not only may Hume’s sun not rise tomorrow, but any number of uncertain disasters could occur without warning. While the last thousand justifications may have withstood scrutiny, the contradiction may jump from so deep in the sea of infinity that the past thousand were not even distant relatives.

     Optimism, however, always endures, for who is to say that the ultimate object of our seeking, for whatever reason that seeking is undertaken, does not swim about just out of sight? With essentially endless options, uncertainty not only eradicates hope. It alights it. Even if the last thousand happenings systems failed the test of accuracy, infinity offers the chance, however infinitely small, that the next one could run the gamut.

      Naturally, this is all predicated on the assumption that the permutation of the absurdly many worldly elements amounts to infinity. Intuitively, this appears true. Certainly there are so many physical and tangible elements on this world that their endless combination and recombination approaches infinity. More persuasively I offer this; thoughts arise from thoughts. No thought came from emptiness, but rather had some trigger. If one thought arose from another, that implies an ever-descending and ascending chain, each preceding or following another, each slightly varying from the last. From one end of the chain to the other, thoughts transform so radically as to be wholly unrecognizable as a child of an earlier one. Unless one madly claims to know the first thought, or even more insanely, identify the last, this intellectual infinitum will always reign

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Interviews with Doctor Korr
The True Science
By Sheridan Lardner
Summer 2008

   
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
    Over the course of my wanderings, I have met no individual to live longer and travel wider than Kebiim Haq Rumarg ur Korr. He resents my use of these words, for it is a poor linguistic approximation of his true name, being in tongues and tonations too maddening for my race's mind. In our domain, a preferred entitling of this being is Doctor Korr. My friend tells me his occupation is closest to that of a Doctor, our language lacking terms to more precisely describe his work. Since my initial meeting of Doctor Korr, we have spoken at length and on many occasions about his findings in Paracosmological Genealogy. I too did not understand his field for quite some time. Illumination came slowly in a discipline not suited for human minds. Implicit in this statement is that Doctor Korr himself transcended such limitations throughout the millennia. Given his inconceivable age and legendary place of birth, which I will only introduce in the matter I received it, it is no wonder that Doctor Korr is a recognized expert on the Paracosmological in circles far beyond this world.  Material scientists have seldom met with Doctor Korr, and those who have escaped at best with only a mild dose of insanity. Respectable institutions have reacted to his wisdoms like parents forcibly immersed in a child's dream. Yet, for the bold intellectuals mostly relegated to history and fable, Doctor Korr offers gifts grander than the gold of ancient Babylon. These appended interviews are the only existing records of Doctor Korr's research and theories comprehensible by my species. With his blessing do I present them to you in their unedited and unelaborated form. Appreciating his words as works of fiction and speculation is one achievement I ask of you. Accepting them as truth is one I leave on your desk, a tiny creature that will grow wondrous and hideous over time. At that point you must rid yourself of the fanged monstrosity. Or you will face its hunger. But the belly of the beast is no acidic graveyard, rather a doorway past constraints and into enlightened madness. And then you shall understand that it was not the monster's hunger you faced. It was your own.

THE TRUE SCIENCE PART ONE
First Interview Conducted on Friday of ____ in the Year ______
"Beyond the Puppet's Sphere but before I braved the Twice Gone Veil, rises Tall Walls, constructed from vanished ideas so as to bar the Materialists from passing any further. You call these ideas trains of thoughts, so perhaps Tall Walls is ideally illustrated as the vertically piled scrapheap of these derelict machines. Watchmen upon Tall Walls presented me the defensive plan. Materialists, or I should restate, residents of your spheric cluster, cannot mentally move past a lost train of thought. It is known to halt them in their intellectual tracks. Imagine attempting to scale a barrier of the collective history of such abandonments; the mind cannot will it to be. Expansion of that mind you treasure is required, growth in the vaults by way of chisel and rafter...rather, a less subterranean image, a loftier one. A roof above your head cast down for wings to flap and bodies to soar; how can birds fly within a cage?"

"Your neighbors call their home 'here', they call it 'Earth,' or even 'Gaea' as the shamans and practitioners of yesterday said. Selfish classifications cannot be accurate, no more than a man is a genius just by calling himself such. Objective vantages, that is what I have seen and stood from, chiefly atop the observatories on Tall Walls. Optical devices of your realm have a quaint use of seeing past the tip of my finger, and perhaps should I desire to count spots on a rock above I will ask to borrow one. Better yet, legs upon an insect. A fact: those scopes I peered through but the other moment, although perhaps my moment is longer than yours, saw the whole of your sphere and your clustered neighbors. Watchmen take particular pride in the Puppet Sphere, upon which we sit now."

"Ha! I see my terminology is unusually alien to you, more than even those bizarre words you concoct in failed estimation of what is truly strange. Definitions as I have used derive from the True Science, of which no name exists upon this cluster. The vigor of this art is certainly shown in my previous words, no? Paracosmological Genealogy was the term I created to best explain this study to your kind. Cosmological, because it concerns the cosmology, massive and near infinite as it is. Para, as a prefix, for it is something 'other' and 'aside' from what I have found its modified word to mean. And it is a living thing! Born, in a sense, from beings snoring and sleeping long and long. A series of living things the whole cosmology has birthed, and each facet a thing in and of itself, alive! So, Genealogy, to account for its organic nature."

Doctor Korr steps out.