Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Leah Cooper
No idea exists in a vacuum. Even if considered a discrete entity an idea occupies an interstice between concepts that preceded it and suppositions that follow. Yet, in what sort of framework is this succession of ideas located? The Austrian born philosopher, Karl Popper’s work offers an appealing perspective. Popper believed ideas existed in the second of three worlds. His philosophical theory maintains that reality consists of three worlds. The following is a succinct description of these worlds:
“World One, being the physical world, or physical states; World Two, being the world of mind, or mental states, ideas, and perceptions; and World Three, being the body of human knowledge expressed in its manifold forms, or the products of the second world made manifest in the materials of the first world (i.e.–books, papers, paintings, symphonies, and all the products of the human mind.”
As a visual artist, Mel Chin explores and then communicates his ideas through works of art. Yet, these objects are finite, they exist in the third world, the idea does not live inside the object nor is it permanently bound to the form that disseminated it. Rather, once the object/work of art conveys the idea, the idea once again belongs to world two, the world of ideas.
In fact, theories will contain a ‘surplus of meaning’. A term use by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur to mean …”ideologies (as indeed many forms of human expression) conveyed more information than their authors were aware of, or had intended.” (Freeden 2003) This leaves space for the possibility that one “theoretician may be unaware of the relevance of some experimental finding for the theory on which he or she works.” Which are then “discovered by subsequent work.” (Chalmers 1999)
I would contend that the evidence of an idea’s survival is in fact substantiated by its presence whether large or small in the architecture of another theory. Artists, scientists, musicians, computer programmers, philosophers, to name just a few, are individuals who create on the fertile ground sowed by others. Furthermore, I would argue that once shared, an idea is no longer the property of its author, it then belongs to the third world. To be encounter, brought into the second world, digested, examined, dissected, updated, upended, negated, and once again returned, anew, to the third world.
One’s ideas are indeed a condition created.
Volume 1, Issue 1
“The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized. ”
- Mel Chin
Leah Cooper
No idea exists in a vacuum. Even if considered a discrete entity an idea occupies an interstice between concepts that preceded it and suppositions that follow. Yet, in what sort of framework is this succession of ideas located? The Austrian born philosopher, Karl Popper’s work offers an appealing perspective. Popper believed ideas existed in the second of three worlds. His philosophical theory maintains that reality consists of three worlds. The following is a succinct description of these worlds:
“World One, being the physical world, or physical states; World Two, being the world of mind, or mental states, ideas, and perceptions; and World Three, being the body of human knowledge expressed in its manifold forms, or the products of the second world made manifest in the materials of the first world (i.e.–books, papers, paintings, symphonies, and all the products of the human mind.”
As a visual artist, Mel Chin explores and then communicates his ideas through works of art. Yet, these objects are finite, they exist in the third world, the idea does not live inside the object nor is it permanently bound to the form that disseminated it. Rather, once the object/work of art conveys the idea, the idea once again belongs to world two, the world of ideas.
In fact, theories will contain a ‘surplus of meaning’. A term use by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur to mean …”ideologies (as indeed many forms of human expression) conveyed more information than their authors were aware of, or had intended.” (Freeden 2003) This leaves space for the possibility that one “theoretician may be unaware of the relevance of some experimental finding for the theory on which he or she works.” Which are then “discovered by subsequent work.” (Chalmers 1999)
I would contend that the evidence of an idea’s survival is in fact substantiated by its presence whether large or small in the architecture of another theory. Artists, scientists, musicians, computer programmers, philosophers, to name just a few, are individuals who create on the fertile ground sowed by others. Furthermore, I would argue that once shared, an idea is no longer the property of its author, it then belongs to the third world. To be encounter, brought into the second world, digested, examined, dissected, updated, upended, negated, and once again returned, anew, to the third world.
One’s ideas are indeed a condition created.
