Picture the 16th and 17th centuries along a timeline. Punctuate the timeline with a gradual procession of revelatory events, each informing in its own way the statement:
the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.
The Copernican Revolution can also be referenced as a logically singular historical event. While an achievement a long time in the making, it now refers simply to a statement proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in the past. What makes it so memorable still in the collective psyche is its impact. Reorientation to heliocentrism sent ripples of change through a critical mass of culture’s interworking parts. Broadly, science, religion, and philosophy and the cultural institutions governing each.
The culminating event on the timeline toward heliocentrism was simple. Telescopy. This made Galileo, inventor of the telescope, the lightning rod of controversy that he was. By making it possible to see further, the heavenly patterns specified by Copernicus and generally by others before them became undeniably logical. Sun at the center. Earth, like its neighbors Mars and Venus, moving around at different yet consistent and thus calculable rates and distances.
Before these events no one, even those who were already in their own ways forwarding a heliocentric solar system, knew precisely when the statement would begin to have far-reaching cultural impact.
The objective framework necessary for a science of representational reality is a similarly profound culmination. I am writing so you can recognize the timeline we are on for what it is.
Looking objectively at a given timeline, in the case of the Copernican Revolution from a position in the distant past, we observe something self-evident. In this way of telling – a retrospective timeline – we recognize that one way to understand time itself is as memory constrained so as to serve as proof.
<aside> 🔗 Come to understand how this represents the existence and functioning of timelines.
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One way then to define the perceptual experience of our time-constrained world is the experience in which what is happening — the events, objects, timelines in our immediate awareness — are self-evident. What I am able to know tells me all I need to know to participate effectively and meaningfully. In exploring Outer Kaleidoscope, Inner Compass through the Everyman’s Collection you will learn about how memory, which integrates effortlessly with time-constraints like timelines, does so precisely because of its timeless qualities.
<aside> 🔗 Come to understand how this represents the existence and functioning of focus-driven remembering
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Objective facts, including events, are in isolation. Timelines give context to both by tying them to direction. Both are used to prove statements, to present them as true beyond reasonable doubt. When referring to a time-constrained world, think of actions and events without context as direction-less, as they lack a timeline. This makes their meanings necessarily subject-dependent. Determined in accord with the preferences of the individual responsible for the citing of the fact. The word bias also works here, but while fitting enough, is a cultural landmine. In the absence of a meaningful connections to representational reality, context confusion has us turning against each other.
The point about facts and meanings is that humans have preferences, and they affect how we sense-make with others. Through OKIC you will come to appreciate exactly how this is not a bug in the system. It’s a feature! The trick is to relate to preferences as both true and time-constrained.
Citing isolated facts refers to the part of reality, truth in particular, that is slippery. By laying out important context, timelines and similar concerted efforts prove a statement’s relevance. If taken one step further and represented in a timeless way, its relevance resonates beyond any specific person’s preferences. With both timeless and time-constrained contexts informing facts and events, it seems true that the reality of statements can only be communicated through concerted efforts like timelines, where relevant context and parties are present(ed). Vibe plus constraint equals momentary preference lived.
The revolution that gave humanity heliocentrism brought with it major socio-cultural change. Humanity started integrating the different distances into deep space that humans with the right equipment were now able to use to make new, precise observations. For people in positions of leadership, it was a bitter pill. The revelatory yet utterly accurate telescope **meant they had to swallow any wrongness in their own doctrines about the earth’s, perhaps even humanity’s, role in any greater celestial dance. Humbling, scary perhaps, because beyond doctrine is always a bunch of perplexing conundrums that, even today, most prefer to ignore.