Randolph Dible
The New School for Social Research
The Theory of Form in Husserl's Science of the Logos and in Spencer-Brown's Calculus This presentation explores George Spencer-Brown's powerfully simple paradigm alongside Edmund Husserl's "science of the logos". In Spencer-Brown's
Laws of Form, a delicate crystalline structure is built on the firm ground of a simple intuition, in the realm of formal objectivity. The powerful analytic and ontological beauty of this entity has captivated the imagination of numerous disciples of multiple disciplines, notably those in mathematics, cybernetics, and systems science. First philosophy encompasses these activities, but differs from them in degree, a degree of difference necessary to contextualize, through crystallization, the expression of the first indication of the first distinction and the indicational space that it opens up.
Phenomenology, a method and model of rigorous scientific thinking, offers a unique means for universal reflection and speculation on the primordiality of the first distinction, outlined in
Laws of Form, and the Calculus of its Indication, which arises from framing nothing. Nothing (the unmarked state) maintains its virginal reproductive integrity in the face of the marked state, a paradox indicated in Spencer-Brown's definition of distinction as perfect continence. In this synthesis of Husserl and Spencer-Brown, we anticipate novel positive developments in first philosophy and
mathesis universalis as well as regressions to a deeper expression of the true genesis of form.
This project is a sequel to "First Philosophy and the First Distinction: Ontology and Phenomenology of Laws of Form," in
Laws of Form: A Fiftieth Anniversary, Volume 72 of the
Series on Knots and Everything (World Scientific; June 2022).
Randolph Dible is a lecturer in philosophy at St. Joseph's University, New York, and a philosophy doctoral student at The New School for Social Research. He has recently published the chapter "First Philosophy and the First Distinction: Ontology and Phenomenology of Laws of Form," in Laws of Form—A Fiftieth Anniversary (2022), and he has forthcoming publications in Analecta Husserliana, including "Ontopoiesis, Autopoiesis, and a Calculus Intended for Self-Reference." Recent publications can also be found in Natur und Kosmos (2020) and The Further Shores of Knowing (2021). He has published on mysticism in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research (2010), and his Masters thesis is entitled Phenomenology of the Spheres: from the Ancient Spherics to Philosophical Cosmology (2018). Randolph Dible's current research focuses on the historical hypothesis of an infinite sphere and its relevance to the interpretation of formation in the cosmologies of George Spencer-Brown and Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Associated with this thesis is a general theory of extension and dimensionality. Randolph Dible is the Secretary and the Director of the Webinar for the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SOPHERE), the Communications Director for the North American Society for Early Phenomenology (NASEP), and Assistant to the Editor for the journal Phenomenological Investigations.More info:
nssr.academia.edu/RandolphDible