a founder of the codex

Mimesis

Similimorpha reddens·the Returning Moth

From Latin similis, like, Greek morphe, form, and Latin reddere, to give back; a form that gives back what it sees.

Level: Conceptorganism
Book: Semaphorathe bestiary of display
Phylum: Linkimage schema
Class: Outputits display
Niche: Consumerother ideas
Mode: Fictionhow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: City

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Relation · Wilkins, 1668: Operation · WordNet, 1990: Act · Llull, 1308: F · Imaginative

Returning Moth, the whole specimen — Plate XXI. Similimorpha reddens, the whole specimen.

Making a likeness is a way of knowing and of becoming, and also the oldest way of being deceived.

We become what we copy, and we copy what we see others want.

behavior Settles beside whatever it watches and slowly takes on its pattern, until the two can no longer be told apart.

provocation

Which of your desires did you first see in someone else?

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 Mimesis — Fig. 1. Kernel
Speaking likeness
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Making a likeness of something lets the likeness stand in for it, show it and teach it.^{1, 3}
drawn as: glyph · view: magnified

Boundary of Mimesis — Fig. 2. Boundary
Picture plane
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set apart from the thing itself by the gap that keeps a copy a copy; close the gap and there is no likeness, only a second thing.²
drawn as: margin · view: series

Intake of Mimesis — Fig. 3. Intake
Life model
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on a model, a person, a gesture or a world, watched closely enough to be taken in.¹
drawn as: ocellus · view: magnified

Mechanism of Mimesis — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Squaring up
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
It selects what it watches and carries it into another medium, voice, paint, gesture or skin, keeping the relations and changing the matter.³
drawn as: chromatophore · view: pinned

Output of Mimesis — Fig. 5. Output
Trompe-l'oeil
❦ dominant organ
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives copies that can be learned from, believed, desired or mistaken for their model.^{1, 5}
drawn as: display · view: detached

Dispersal of Mimesis — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Triangular desire
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It spreads the way imitation spreads, children copying adults and rivals copying each other's desires.⁴
drawn as: ink · view: microscope

Decay of Mimesis — Fig. 7. Decay
Simulacrum
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It cannot reach what has no model, and it slides into deception, rivalry or the empty copy of a copy.^{2, 4}
drawn as: palimpsest · view: pressed

II Meaning associations

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Entanglement

same kind in WordNet Geomancy, Ritual, Knowing Trust

same kind in Llull Apophenia, Dream, Symmetry, Afterlistening, Poetry

same phylum Apophenia, Entanglement, Resonance (Automata), Symbol, Shared Breath, Witnessed Relief, Witnessed Relief (Mycelia)

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

Genome

likeness
representation
imitation also in Echolalia
desire
model

III In the world

Echoes

a viceroy butterfly wearing the pattern of a monarch
a child learning a word by repeating it
a painted window mistaken for a real one
fashions that spread by imitation

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	semaphora
symmetry	bilateral
organization	nested
silhouette	vase
scale	microscopic
proportion	graded latent
growth	apical
articulation	jointed latent
openness	hollow latent
skeleton	exoskeleton latent
locomotion	unmarked latent
pattern	plain latent
coloration	eyespots
substance	membrane
surface	velvety
palette	sepia
luminosity	points
transparency	translucent latent
gesture	bursts
unity	integral latent
modality	unmarked latent
causation	material latent
determinacy	doubled
fusion	mirrored
anomaly	one break
graft	mirrors
technique	gouache
viewpoint	above
value	high key latent
balance	unmarked latent
density	unmarked latent
rhythm	regular latent
saturation	vivid
appendages	tentacles, lanterns
anchor (body)	an ammonite, a coiled chambered shell with frilled suture lines
anchor (detail)	a sundew leaf covered in glistening sticky tentacles

Sources

Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 4
Plato, Republic, book X
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (1946)
René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961)
Henry Walter Bates, on mimicry among Amazonian butterflies (1862)

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