de alchemia cybernetica
…est sicut quod est inferius
Michael Maier's Atalanata Fugiens (which may have been the first multimedia presentation) says,
Fac ex mare & fmina circulum, inde quadrangulum, hinc triangulum, fac circulum & habebis lap. Philosophorum.Make a circle around man and woman, then a square, now a triangle; make a circle, and you will have the Philosophers' stone.
Fmina másque unus fiant tibi circulus, ex quo
Surgat, habens æquum forma quadrata latus.
Hinc Trigonum ducas, omni qui parte rotundam
In sphæram redeat: Tum Lapis ortus erit.
Si res tanta tuæ non mox venit obvia menti,
Dogma Geometræ sic capis, omne scies.
Around the man and woman draw a ring,
From which an equal-sided square springs forth.
From this derive a triangle, which should touch
A sphere on every side: and then the Stone
Will have arisen. If this is not clear,
Then learn Geometry, and know it all.
The Prima Differentia is the First Distinction between the One Mind and the One Matter (Prima Materia).
The body, mind (or soul), and spirit are three aspects of the One Thing, differentiated by the One Mind, and correspond to Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury, respectively. The circle, square, and triangle also correspond to mind, body, and spirit.
The somatic-semiotic-social triad comes from Yair Neuman's Processes and Boundaries of the Mind: Extending the Limit Line. Yair makes the case that mind(ing) happens in a nervous system, in a sign/language system, and in a social system, simultaneously, although various aspects may be emphasized. Cf. Stuart Umpleby's distinctions and connections between engineering, biological, and social cybernetics, in "Unifying Epistemologies by Combining World, Description and Observer" (PDF/PPT). Cf. also the three bodies (individual/personal/somatic, social/symbolic, and political) in Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock's "The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology."
The outer circle corresponds to the inner circle as described previously in Part 5. Here-now we may re/cognize a little mind with-in a big Mind.
The elementary cybernetic system with its messages in circuit is, in fact, the simplest unit of mind […] More complicated systems are perhaps more worthy to be called mental systems, but essentially this what we are talking about […] We get a picture, then, of mind as synonymous with cybernetic system […] And we know that within Mind in the widest sense there will be hierarchy of subsystems, any one of which we can call an individual mind. — Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind
author: joshua madara