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At one point a character in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum says "archetypes don't exist, the body exists" and then gives some sexual and reproductive examples, follo
by schoen 1y ago
At one point a character in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum says "archetypes don't exist, the body exists" and then gives some sexual and reproductive examples, followed by
> And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn’t stink as much, because it’s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above—you really have to be in an attic—while you often hurt yourself falling. That’s why up is angelic and down devilish.
You could also argue that because of gravity and potential energy, up is usually the result of purposive action and effort, while down is often the result of accident or neglect ("you often hurt yourself falling"). That potential energy (and wide-open space) can also be used for maneuvering, so if two people or other creatures are fighting, one who is higher is generally at an advantage compared to one who is lower or lying on the ground. The lower party has less energy available to direct toward the opponent, and usually less room to move, being more constrained by the presence of the ground.
- hobs 1y ago> so if two people or other creatures are fighting, one who is higher is generally at an advantage compared to one who is lower or lying on the ground Tell that to a BJJ fighter.
- ghurtado 1y agoOnly an Anakin Skywalker vs Royce Gracey fight can settle this question once and for all.
- gowld 1y agoI'll send the message via DJI drone.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 1y agoBJJ fighters still think higher up is an advantage. Body weight to press down on opponent, greater freedom of movement.
- hobs 1y agoYes, I did a horrible thing and made a joke.
- thomascgalvin 1y agoThere are a lot of people who prefer to fight from guard.
- worthless-trash 1y agoThats the thing, just stand up... and you win the fight, they look stupid on the ground.
- navane 1y agoWe print black on white. Does that mean that words are bad and only defile the blank sheet?
- navane 1y agoWhat does the transition from white chalk on blackboard to black markers on whiteboard mean?
- marcosdumay 1y agoThat people will have fewer cases of lung cancer.
- chopin 1y agoBut more cases of liver cancer.
- kulahan 1y agoPlain chalk is carcinogenic??
- Doxin 1y agoI'd assume getting roughly anything in your lungs frequently enough is carcinogenic.
- kulahan 1y agoDamn nitrogen.
- marcosdumay 1y agoYou have a point. Now that I went looking, most of the literature focus on silicosis, and there aren't many long-term studies that can tell us if it's carcinogenic or not. It's very likely carcinogenic too, but now I don't know what to expect on the correlation, because it's possible that people die from it before they get the chance of developing a tumor.
- cyanydeez 1y agoIt's probably even dumber than this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10676768/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10676768/
- nathan_compton 1y agoI think its pretty weird to take this passage at face value. "Foucault's Pendulum" is, at least in part, about how facile this kind of yarn spinning is. Any prejudice or conclusion anyone might like to make is a few waves of the hand away from something that looks like a good argument. Interestingly, Aristotelian physics would have described down as "the true, appropriate place" for material objects and "up" as the unnatural state, only produced by violence and bound to be corrected by the universe.
- schoen 1y agoI don't remember the context in the book very well, but I remember thinking that the premise was that the speaker here (Lia) was somehow well-grounded in concrete reality, by contrast to the other super-mystical characters in the book -- that she could relate ideas to concrete human experience, while other characters were off in the proverbial cloud-cuckoo land. Your point about Aristotle is well-taken.