Heidegger’s Stick

Standing in the sun, I stood watching an interaction between a form and two forces. The forces involved were water pressing upon a canal’s lock gate and a north-easterly wind moving gently through the area around the canal. The form was a simple wooden stick, probably dropped from a nearby tree.

A quick glance told me that the wind was whipping up the surface of the water making waves in one direction, that the current was pushing the underlying water in another direction and that the stick, bobbing up and down and fixed in one position, was generating ripples in the water pushing in two additional different directions. My initial thought was “huh, that interaction is creating ripples in the water in four different directions at once”, not something you see, or perhaps notice, every day.

The notion of this interaction niggled at me though, I had immediately thought that the wind was the guiding force at work and that the stick and water merely displayed its affect. An easy assumption to make and easier still to cease wondering at that point the nature of the interaction. But what if the stick could be defined as a tool being used by the water to create an effect, that the wind only made the effect more noticeable. Saying that the stick is therefore a means to an end is a no more difficult assumption to make.

Taking as a given that the wind is generated and has an affect gives a ground to analyse from but doesn’t help much in defining the nature of the water and the stick in this interaction. Perhaps the stick could be said to be impacting on the water by utilising the wind or that, as before, the water is using the stick to impact on itself. Both scenarios see the winds affect as a given and the result being ripples. Essentially “neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other.” 1

In an attempt to gain a new perspective, I drew back a little from the inner workings of the stick, wind and water and assumed their relationship akin a triumvirate rather than individual entities. This, in my head and through some light deductive reasoning, gave credence to the thought of the wind as the fundamental force and that the stick and water were using each other to create ripples. By taking this as a given in this instance, we can ascertain that only through the combined efforts of the stick and water using the wind can we see the ripples specific to this interaction. That if the wind were removed, the ripples woud still happen, though to a much lesser degree. But if we were to remove the stick from the water (or the water from the stick) we would be left with two entities unable to interact with each other and, as such, would produce nothing.

This, of course, is not definitive, but does introduce the ripples as entities in themselves, as ephemeral as they are. Once the ripples appear, the argument between the three begins anew, identifying the ripples as arbiter for discussion and adding an attribute to the two identified forces and the form that perhaps fell from a tree or perhaps was thrown.

by an art student

1 Martin Heidegger, ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’. 1950.

2 months ago 

The thought behind the Secret Mountain is just that, a thought. It’s the idea that by taking a thread from someone’s notebook or a scribble made on a napkin or an ordinary aspect of a person’s life, you could present it, voice it, take it from obscurity and that it could become something else. That ‘else’ may only be a brief conversation, the furtherance of an ongoing project or nothing at all. It’s the transformation and what becomes of it that holds the interest. This project has sprung from a number of sources but its roots are in the tenets of the expression to ‘pay it forward’. The expression was pleasantly explained to me at the end of last year and it’s been silently gaining ground in my head ever since. Where the expression suggests that a good deed be repaid by passing it onto others, it presents here in the form of collaboration, that individuals who read something here may be compelled to contribute their own content, thus furthering the variety of material present. Another part of this project is the small set of restrictions inevitably placed upon it. While most of these restrictions are inherent to the individual contribution, one persistent limitation is that contributers remain anonymous but can be identified by the role in which they write, be it student, graduate, professional or just an interested party. thesecretmountain@gmail.com

The thought behind the Secret Mountain is just that, a thought. It’s the idea that by taking a thread from someone’s notebook or a scribble made on a napkin or an ordinary aspect of a person’s life, you could present it, voice it, take it from obscurity and that it could become something else. That ‘else’ may only be a brief conversation, the furtherance of an ongoing project or nothing at all. It’s the transformation and what becomes of it that holds the interest.

This project has sprung from a number of sources but its roots are in the tenets of the expression to ‘pay it forward’. The expression was pleasantly explained to me at the end of last year and it’s been silently gaining ground in my head ever since. Where the expression suggests that a good deed be repaid by passing it onto others, it presents here in the form of collaboration, that individuals who read something here may be compelled to contribute their own content, thus furthering the variety of material present.

Another part of this project is the small set of restrictions inevitably placed upon it. While most of these restrictions are inherent to the individual contribution, one persistent limitation is that contributers remain anonymous but can be identified by the role in which they write, be it student, graduate, professional or just an interested party.

thesecretmountain@gmail.com

2 months ago 

Heidegger’s Stick

Standing in the sun, I stood watching an interaction between a form and two forces. The forces involved were water pressing upon a canal’s lock gate and a north-easterly wind moving gently through the area around the canal. The form was a simple wooden stick, probably dropped from a nearby tree.

A quick glance told me that the wind was whipping up the surface of the water making waves in one direction, that the current was pushing the underlying water in another direction and that the stick, bobbing up and down and fixed in one position, was generating ripples in the water pushing in two additional different directions. My initial thought was “huh, that interaction is creating ripples in the water in four different directions at once”, not something you see, or perhaps notice, every day.

The notion of this interaction niggled at me though, I had immediately thought that the wind was the guiding force at work and that the stick and water merely displayed its affect. An easy assumption to make and easier still to cease wondering at that point the nature of the interaction. But what if the stick could be defined as a tool being used by the water to create an effect, that the wind only made the effect more noticeable. Saying that the stick is therefore a means to an end is a no more difficult assumption to make.

Taking as a given that the wind is generated and has an affect gives a ground to analyse from but doesn’t help much in defining the nature of the water and the stick in this interaction. Perhaps the stick could be said to be impacting on the water by utilising the wind or that, as before, the water is using the stick to impact on itself. Both scenarios see the winds affect as a given and the result being ripples. Essentially “neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other.” 1

In an attempt to gain a new perspective, I drew back a little from the inner workings of the stick, wind and water and assumed their relationship akin a triumvirate rather than individual entities. This, in my head and through some light deductive reasoning, gave credence to the thought of the wind as the fundamental force and that the stick and water were using each other to create ripples. By taking this as a given in this instance, we can ascertain that only through the combined efforts of the stick and water using the wind can we see the ripples specific to this interaction. That if the wind were removed, the ripples woud still happen, though to a much lesser degree. But if we were to remove the stick from the water (or the water from the stick) we would be left with two entities unable to interact with each other and, as such, would produce nothing.

This, of course, is not definitive, but does introduce the ripples as entities in themselves, as ephemeral as they are. Once the ripples appear, the argument between the three begins anew, identifying the ripples as arbiter for discussion and adding an attribute to the two identified forces and the form that perhaps fell from a tree or perhaps was thrown.

by an art student

1 Martin Heidegger, ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’. 1950.

The thought behind the Secret Mountain is just that, a thought. It’s the idea that by taking a thread from someone’s notebook or a scribble made on a napkin or an ordinary aspect of a person’s life, you could present it, voice it, take it from obscurity and that it could become something else. That ‘else’ may only be a brief conversation, the furtherance of an ongoing project or nothing at all. It’s the transformation and what becomes of it that holds the interest. This project has sprung from a number of sources but its roots are in the tenets of the expression to ‘pay it forward’. The expression was pleasantly explained to me at the end of last year and it’s been silently gaining ground in my head ever since. Where the expression suggests that a good deed be repaid by passing it onto others, it presents here in the form of collaboration, that individuals who read something here may be compelled to contribute their own content, thus furthering the variety of material present. Another part of this project is the small set of restrictions inevitably placed upon it. While most of these restrictions are inherent to the individual contribution, one persistent limitation is that contributers remain anonymous but can be identified by the role in which they write, be it student, graduate, professional or just an interested party. thesecretmountain@gmail.com

The thought behind the Secret Mountain is just that, a thought. It’s the idea that by taking a thread from someone’s notebook or a scribble made on a napkin or an ordinary aspect of a person’s life, you could present it, voice it, take it from obscurity and that it could become something else. That ‘else’ may only be a brief conversation, the furtherance of an ongoing project or nothing at all. It’s the transformation and what becomes of it that holds the interest.

This project has sprung from a number of sources but its roots are in the tenets of the expression to ‘pay it forward’. The expression was pleasantly explained to me at the end of last year and it’s been silently gaining ground in my head ever since. Where the expression suggests that a good deed be repaid by passing it onto others, it presents here in the form of collaboration, that individuals who read something here may be compelled to contribute their own content, thus furthering the variety of material present.

Another part of this project is the small set of restrictions inevitably placed upon it. While most of these restrictions are inherent to the individual contribution, one persistent limitation is that contributers remain anonymous but can be identified by the role in which they write, be it student, graduate, professional or just an interested party.

thesecretmountain@gmail.com

Heidegger’s Stick

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thesecretmountain@gmail.com

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