IV


 * < WEEK 4 >**


 * COMPLEX**

//Long before the introduction of idolatry into religion, the early priests caused the statue of a man to be placed in the sanctuary of the temple. This human figure symbolized the Divine Power in all its intricate manifestations. Thus the priests of antiquity accepted man as their textbook, and through the study of him learned to understand the greater and more abstruse mysteries of the celestial scheme of which they were a part. It is not improbable that this mysterious figure standing over the primitive altars was made in the nature of a manikin and, like certain emblematic hands in the Mystery schools, was covered with either carved or painted hieroglyphs. The statue may have opened, thus showing the relative positions of the organs, bones, muscles, nerves, and other parts. After ages of research, the manikin became a mass of intricate hieroglyphs and symbolic figures. Every part had its secret meaning. The measurements formed a basic standard by means of which it was possible to measure all parts of cosmos. It was a glorious composite emblem of all the knowledge possessed by the sages and hierophants.// //Then came the age of idolatry. The Mysteries decayed from within. The secrets were lost and none knew the identity of the mysterious man who stood over the altar. It was remembered only that the figure was a sacred and glorious symbol of the Universal Power, and it finally came to be looked upon as a god-the One in whose image man was made. Having lost the knowledge of the purpose for which the manikin was originally constructed, the priests worshiped this effigy until at last their lack of spiritual understanding brought the temple down in ruins about their heads and the statue crumbled with the civilization that had forgotten its meaning.// //Proceeding from this assumption of the first theologians that man is actually fashioned in the image of God, the initiated minds of past ages erected the stupendous structure of theology upon the foundation of the human body. The religious world of today is almost totally ignorant of the fact that the science of biology is the fountainhead of its doctrines and tenets. Many of the codes and laws believed by modern divines to have been direct revelations from Divinity are in reality the fruitage of ages of patient delving into the intricacies of the human constitution and the infinite wonders revealed by such a study.// [__The Secret Teachings of All Ages__, Manly P. Hall, pg.224, (1928)]

Complications as rendered through the substantial aggregation of knowledge to the eventual atrophy and loss in implicit meaning, yet not in the superficial retention of form and tradition. Strata as confused and misinterpreted could be viewed as one aspect of complexity. The multiplication of variables and the irreversible as another:

//Thermal devices convert usable energy into less usable forms, thereby diminishing and eventually exhausting available resources. The operation of a thermodynamic system depends on a temperature differential between the machine and its environment as well as among its different components…One of the most significant breaks with the principles of classical physics is the rejection of the notion of reversibility and the insistence that at least some natural processes are irreversible. Our consideration of the phenomenon of entropy has shown that irreversibility introduces time into systems and structures that otherwise seem unchanging…the recognition of stochastic processes secures the trajectory of the arrow of time and makes reversibility so unlikely as to be effectively impossible…If certain systems display “intrinsic randomness,” there must be “intrinsic irreversibility.” Time, in other words, is a measure of increasing randomness. Accordingly, __the accumulation of random events introduces a distinction between past and future that lends time its decisive direction__// [Time as stratefied random events]. //As randomness increases, entropy grows and vice versa.// [“noise in formation”, Mark Taylor, __The Moment of Complexity__, pp.112, 116-117 (2001)]

Complexity in connections and correlations may arise from cross-referencing quotes within quotes, or stories within stories. As a superfiscial example, the use of Pure Data as a means of diagramming my activities involved in the editing and alteration of the Ambient Machines Wiki through text and hyperlinks establishing a multiplicity of connections and networked information within. It is obviously not making full use of Pure Data's computational faculties, but it does begin to aid in an understanding of how one establishes a complicated network of information within the system, and without - to external, or subscreen links embedded within an object. All that is required is an actual message, verifiable data and input to make use of the current husk of a network. That would be a complicated task, for the understanding now is at a visual/diagrammatic level, and lacks the comprehension of the in-depth programmatic functions. They in-and-of themselves are complex.




 * [[image:Links2.jpg]][[image:Links3.jpg]]



< week iii : week v >**