Thursday, May 01, 2025

The Reichenbach Fall

Objection. "Philosophy is not poetry. It is the clarification of meanings through logical analysis; and picture language has no place in it." (Hans Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, p. 145)

On the contrary, Wittgenstein says: "We make ourselves pictures of the facts." (T2.1)

I answer that poetry is the intensification of meaning through pathematic synthesis; and the image is its very locus.

Reply to the objection. Even on the same page, Hans Reichenbach, you tell us that "the motion of the stars is the mirror image of the rotation of the earth." This is not a picture? There is no metaphor in this language? I humbly submit that you, too, are but an "angelheaded hipster burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night."