du Ciel et des Étoiles (ii)

from astrophysicist Trịnh Xuân Thuận at the University of Virginia

The encyclopedist Trinh Xuan Thuan treats Consciousness between Comets and the Cosmological constant. The title of the article in French is Conscience.

In that language we use that word to mean awareness or scruples, distinct ideas in English. The first syllable means what it does in conversation in both languages: engaged, together.

That second syllable, science, once meant to cut, like a sickle, and before that, before settled agriculture, to shit, to cut off a turd as the herd animals did walking among the speakers of proto-Indo-European on their migrations east and west. To know is to analyze, to dissect.

We do it together with our chattel and company or in the presence of our self. Conscience. It feels individual because it is never alone.

Well you can see where I think consciousness comes from. I am an anthropologist and a linguist. I think it defies the facts to consider our origins in a single mind, even that of René Descartes.

In the case of the origin of consciousness the imaginative power of reduction fails. So, come to think of it, I agree with the result of Thuan’s potted dualism and monism, the blind alley he leads the reader up after this fine first paragraph:

There have been two big leaps in the evolution of life on Earth. Both, all, remain wrapped in a big mystery and understanding them stands a formidable challenge to human intelligence and spirit. The first concerns the passage from inanimate to animate. We do not, for the moment, have the least idea of the processes which made it possible for life to surge from a collection of the dust of inanimate stars. The second concerns the acquisition by man of the processes of cognition and symbolization, responsible for art, science, and culture.

This was the second Viet Nam letter of 2 so far addressed to du Ciel et des Étoiles by Trịnh Xuân Thuận.

The first noodles around life, the universe, and everything, on October 3, 2022.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.