a founder of the codex

Erosion

Abrasoria lenta·the Patient Scour

From Latin abradere, to scrape away, and lentus, slow, for a slow scraper of the land.

Level
Conceptorganism
Book
Artesthe natural history of animal builders
Phylum
Verticalityimage schema
Class
Outputits structure
Niche
Decomposerwhat is dead
Mode
Habithow it keeps existing
Stage
Matureindividuated
Status
Living
Habitat
Ruin

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Inorganic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: World · WordNet, 1990: Process · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Patient Scour, the whole specimen
Plate XIII. Abrasoria lenta, the whole specimen.

Water, wind and ice wear down whatever stands above them, grain by grain, and carry it to low places where it builds new ground, so erosion makes landforms by taking land away.

Whatever stands up is already being carried down.

behavior Lies almost still for centuries, works fastest in storms, and leaves its hardest parts standing alone as everything around them is carried off.

provocation

What hard part of an old memory still stands after the rest has worn away?

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 output, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Erosion

Fig. 1. Kernel

Deep time

Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?

Any height left open to water, wind and ice is worn down grain by grain, and small forces given enough time level mountains.1

drawn as: pattern · view: magnified

Boundary of Erosion

Fig. 2. Boundary

Base level

What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?

It is defined against what raises and lays down land, uplift, eruption and deposition. It works on ground standing above base level, the lowest level to which running water can cut.1, 2

drawn as: ring · view: transparent

Intake of Erosion

Fig. 3. Intake

Regolith

What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?

It feeds on bare rock and soil open to the weather, and on the cracks and loose grains that frost, roots and chemical weathering prepare for it.3

drawn as: materials · view: detached

Mechanism of Erosion

Fig. 4. Mechanism

Scour

How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?

Running water, moving ice and wind drag grains over the ground, and each pass scrapes a little away, so the work is done by repetition over long spans of time.3, 1

drawn as: spinneret · view: at work

Output of Erosion

Fig. 5. Output

Inselberg

❦ dominant organ

What does it make possible, visible or knowable?

It carves valleys, canyons and cliffs, and leaves the hardest rock standing, such as an inselberg rising alone above the gentle slope of bare rock worn around it, the pediment or glacis.5

drawn as: structure · view: cross section

Dispersal of Erosion

Fig. 6. Dispersal

Delta

What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?

What it removes travels as sediment, carried by rivers and wind to deltas, dunes and the sea floor, where it settles in layers that become the rock of future land.1

drawn as: larva · view: in situ

Decay of Erosion

Fig. 7. Decay

Peneplain

What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?

It slows as it succeeds. The lower the land, the slower the wearing, and an old landscape ends as a nearly level plain close to base level, the peneplain, until new uplift starts the work again.4, 2

drawn as: empty work · view: pressed

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 Fire, Rain, Salt, Storm, Wind

same kind in WordNet Breath, Entelechy, Entropy, Fire, Metamorphosis, The Common Lung, Self-Fulfilling Alarm, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Witnessed Relief (Mycelia), Commemorative Revision, Fear's Breath

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

same phylum Faith, Innocence, Rain, Vertigo

same dominant organ Apophenia, Chiaroscuro, Echolalia, Emergence, Mimesis, Nostalgia, Placebo, Rain, Babelhum, Afterlistening, The Festival Calendar

Genome

III In the world

Echoes

  • the Grand Canyon
  • Uluru rising above the central Australian plain
  • a sea stack cut off from its cliff
  • stone steps hollowed by centuries of feet

IV Record

How it was drawn

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

axisvalue
bookartes
symmetryamorphous
organizationnested
silhouettediscoid
scaleimmense
proportioncompressed
growthapical
articulationjointed
opennessspongy latent
skeletonwoody
locomotionundulating latent
patternplain latent
colorationwarning latent
substanceobsidian
surfacefilamentous
palettesaffron
luminositynone
transparencyopaque latent
gesturecoils
unityfragment latent
modalitycontingent latent
causationefficient latent
determinacyunmarked latent
fusiongraft
anomalypetrified
graftstair
techniquewatercolour
viewpointmotion
valuechiaroscuro latent
balanceleaning latent
densitygraded detail latent
rhythmregular latent
saturationunmarked latent
appendagestendrils, spines
anchor (body)a bowerbird's bower, an avenue of sticks decorated with collected bright objects
anchor (detail)a lotus seed pod, a flat-topped cone pitted with seed chambers

Sources

  1. James Hutton, Theory of the Earth (1788)
  2. John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (1875), on base level
  3. Grove Karl Gilbert, Report on the Geology of the Henry Mountains (1877)
  4. William Morris Davis, The Geographical Cycle (Geographical Journal, 1899)
  5. Lester C. King, Canons of Landscape Evolution (Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 1953)

❦