Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
If ever brain-mind reaches that power point, the cosmos will be infected
by the bug of transcendence. From there on is the Mystero Tremendo. Only
the urban effect can take us from here to there, the singularity of intellec-
tion becoming a cosmic event. The cosmos could be transfigured by such
intrusion.
We know that the planet as a source of life is doomed. No gods nor spir-
its will do anything about such nemesis.They are after all only simulations
constructed by our anguished minds. What can carry on the tasks of con-
sciousness is its potential power of pervading the cosmos and even prevail
on it, as senseless as it is, to reveal itself to itself in an astonishing act of self-
revelation.We, all of reality, would be there in an esthetic and equitable full-
ness. “Religion” (
religo
) fully concluded.
L'homme c'est une machine à faire des dieux,
as Henri Bergson once wrote.
Star dust, us, making stars into grace.
NOTES TO “PROSPECTS AND RETROSPECT”
1. Something of the wonder of early cosmopolitanism can be savored in the fol-
lowing Biblical passages: “And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy
corn; because that the famine was so sore in all lands.” (Genesis 41: 57) “And
Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt.” (Genesis 42: 3) “And the
sons of Israel came to buy corn among those that came: for the famine was in the
land of Canaan. And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that sold
to all the people of the land.” (Genesis 42: 5, 6) A crowd as varied and colorful as a
United Nations cocktail party is conjured by the phrase “all countries came into
Egypt,” and all that varied humanity (“among those that came”) was gathered into
one central administrative zone (“he it was that sold to all the people of the land”).
Far more recently Charles Baudelaire (in his essay “The Painter of Modern Life”)
became, perhaps, the first modern to notice the excitement of moving among the
crowds that were only then appearing as a daily feature of cities, providing a kind
of theater with sets on two sides and one-dimensional movement down the side-
walk with self-presentation as the principal form of expression.
2. See Hans Jensen,
Sign Symbol and Script
(Allen and Unwin, 1970). When the
development of an alphabetic script, with consonants and vowels, was completed,
“Further evolution is conceivable still in only two directions: 1. in the direction of
greater accuracy . . . and 2. in the direction of greater simplification,” 53. Plainly, all
notations are not alphabetic, and scientific, musical, mathematical, etc. and other
notational systems abound. Likewise, all true cities are the same and differ.
3. The hieroglyphic symbol for city (which Wallis Budge translates as “house,”
although recognizing it as a component of and reference to Heliopolis, “the
