a founder of the codex

Amber

Succinaria perennis·the Outlasting Resin

From Latin succinum, amber, and perennis, lasting through the years, the resin that outlives the tree that wept it.

Level: Conceptorganism
Book: Mineralsthe mineralogical treatise
Phylum: Containerimage schema
Class: Boundaryits rind
Niche: Consumerother ideas
Mode: Referencehow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Archive

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Organic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: Stone · WordNet, 1990: Substance · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Outlasting Resin, the whole specimen — Plate I. Succinaria perennis, the whole specimen.

Amber is a tree's resin hardened over ages into a seal that keeps small moments of life intact long after the forest that made it is gone.

What is sealed early enough outlasts the tree that made it.

behavior It wells up slowly where a tree is hurt, closes over whatever touches it, and then waits in the dark for millions of years.

provocation

Which moment of yours would you seal away from the air, and who would find it?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its boundary, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Amber — Fig. 1. Kernel
Fossil resin
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Amber is tree resin hardened over millions of years, and what it seals inside keeps its shape while everything around it decays.^{1, 2}
drawn as: seed crystal · view: magnified

Boundary of Amber — Fig. 2. Boundary
Weathering crust
❦ dominant organ
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It seals what it holds away from air and water, and its own outer layer slowly oxidizes into a dark crust that shields the clear core.²
drawn as: rind · view: cast

Intake of Amber — Fig. 3. Intake
Wound resin
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on the resin a tree pours over its wounds, which flows over whatever touches it, insects, seeds, feathers and drops of water.³
drawn as: mother liquor · view: pressed

Mechanism of Amber — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Cross-linking
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
Buried in sediment, the resin loses its volatile oils and its molecules link into long chains, turning soft copal into hard amber over millions of years.²
drawn as: lattice · view: cast

Output of Amber — Fig. 5. Output
Inclusion
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It keeps moments of ancient life whole, an insect caught mid-step, a feather, a flower, so forests a hundred million years old can be seen in detail.^{3, 2}
drawn as: habit · view: cross section

Dispersal of Amber — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Blue earth
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It lies scattered through buried strata and washes up on Baltic shores, and its Greek name, elektron, became the root of the word electricity.^{1, 4}
drawn as: shard · view: transparent

Decay of Amber — Fig. 7. Decay
Crazing
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
In light and air it darkens, grows brittle and crazes with fine cracks until it crumbles. Burned, it gives off a sweet resinous smoke.²
drawn as: weathering · view: series

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Entelechy, Music, Silence, Vertigo, The Common Lung, Shared Breath

same kind in Wilkins Salt

same kind in WordNet Salt

same kind in Llull Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Fire, Rain, Resonance, Resonance (Automata), Salt, Storm, Wind, Self-Ending Order

same phylum Dream, Placebo, Solitude, The Common Lung, Knowing Trust, The Shared Cell

same dominant organ Equinox, Solitude, Tongue Horizon, The Shared Cell

Genome

resin
enclosure
preservation also in Salt
time also in Patience
survival

III In the world

Echoes

an insect caught in Baltic amber
the Amber Road to Rome
rubbed amber pulling at straw
the tears of the Heliades turned to amber

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axis	value
book	minerals
symmetry	radial 3
organization	solitary
silhouette	columnar
scale	hand
proportion	compressed latent
growth	moulting
articulation	imbricate latent
openness	solid latent
skeleton	exoskeleton
locomotion	sessile
pattern	reticulate latent
coloration	cryptic latent
substance	seed coat
surface	scaled
palette	ember
luminosity	none
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	sinks
unity	fragment latent
modality	unmarked latent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	unmarked latent
fusion	nested
anomaly	none
graft	vials
technique	stipple
viewpoint	three quarter
value	low key latent
balance	top heavy latent
density	sparse latent
rhythm	alternating latent
saturation	muted
appendages	armour plates, bladders
anchor (body)	a geode cut open, its cavity lined with crystal points
anchor (detail)	a sea urchin test, a domed shell marked in five bands of tubercles

Sources

Pliny the Elder, Natural History (77 CE), book 37, on amber
David A. Grimaldi, Amber: Window to the Past (1996)
George O. Poinar Jr. and Roberta Poinar, The Quest for Life in Amber (1994)
William Gilbert, De Magnete (1600)

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