a founder of the codex

Vertigo

Ilingia praeceps·the Reeling Edge

From Greek ilinx, a whirlpool and the whirling of vertigo, and Latin praeceps, headlong and steep, the whirl that comes at a steep edge.

Level: Conceptorganism
Book: Pathematathe treatise on the passions
Phylum: Verticalityimage schema
Class: Kernelits spark
Niche: Extremophileabsence
Mode: Attachmenthow it keeps existing
Stage: Matureindividuated
Status: Living
Habitat: Body

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Organic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: Disease · WordNet, 1990: Feeling · Llull, 1308: G · Sensitive

Reeling Edge, the whole specimen — Plate XL. Ilingia praeceps, the whole specimen.

Vertigo is the felt loss of ground when the senses disagree about which way is down, and at a height it joins the fear of falling to a pull toward the drop.

At an edge the fear of falling and the wish to fall are one feeling.

behavior Clings to high edges and spins in place, tilting further the longer it looks down.

provocation

At the edge of a drop, which part of you leans back and which part leans forward?

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

Kernel of Vertigo — Fig. 1. Kernel
Vection
❦ dominant organ
Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?
Vertigo is the false sense that the body or the world is moving, the ground slipping away while everything stands still.¹
drawn as: spark · view: series

Boundary of Vertigo — Fig. 2. Boundary
Plumb line
What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?
It is set against balance, the agreement of the inner ear, the eyes and the feet about which way is down, and it begins where that agreement breaks.¹
drawn as: skin · view: at work

Intake of Vertigo — Fig. 3. Intake
Visual cliff
What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?
It feeds on heights and voids, where the nearest still thing lies too far below for the eyes to steady the body, and on spinning and swaying.¹
drawn as: nerve net · view: transparent

Mechanism of Vertigo — Fig. 4. Mechanism
Sensory conflict
How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?
The inner ear, the eyes and the muscles report different motions, and the brain, caught between them, answers with a sense of turning, nausea and the urge to grip.^{2, 1}
drawn as: flush · view: pinned

Output of Vertigo — Fig. 5. Output
Dizziness of freedom
What does it make possible, visible or knowable?
It gives a dizzy awe, the pull and the fear of the drop at once, which Kierkegaard took as the image of anxiety, the dizziness of freedom.⁴
drawn as: signal · view: detached

Dispersal of Vertigo — Fig. 6. Dispersal
Call of the void
What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?
It travels as the image of the fall, the void below that seems to call one down, and as games that seek it on swings, rides and whirling dances.^{5, 3}
drawn as: contagion · view: in situ

Decay of Vertigo — Fig. 7. Decay
Sea legs
What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?
It wears off with repetition, as sailors find their sea legs and dancers learn to spin, and leaves a body steadier at the edge.¹
drawn as: afterglow · 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 Amber, Breath, Chiaroscuro, Chimera, Entelechy, Music, Silence, The Common Lung, Shared Breath

same kind in Wilkins Placebo

same kind in WordNet Fear, Nostalgia

same kind in Llull Chimera, Fear, Qualia, Silence, Babelhum, The Common Lung, Shared Breath, Fear's Breath

same phylum Erosion, Faith, Innocence, Rain

same dominant organ Entanglement, Entelechy, Geomancy, Qualia, Salt, Syllable, Symmetry, Volition, Knowing Trust, Hesychology

Genome

dizziness
height
imbalance
awe
falling

III In the world

Echoes

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)
looking down from a cliff edge
a child spinning until the room turns
a sailor finding sea legs

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	pathemata
symmetry	asymmetric
organization	nested
silhouette	creeping
scale	microscopic
proportion	elongated latent
growth	swelling
articulation	imbricate latent
openness	lattice latent
skeleton	woody latent
locomotion	jetting latent
pattern	spots latent
coloration	eyespots latent
substance	petal tissue
surface	mottled
palette	meadow
luminosity	none
transparency	clouded latent
gesture	quivers
unity	composite latent
modality	possible latent
causation	unmarked latent
determinacy	doubled latent
fusion	mirrored
anomaly	wound bloom
graft	lenses
technique	chromolith
viewpoint	below
value	chiaroscuro
balance	cantilevered
density	graded detail
rhythm	alternating latent
saturation	unmarked latent
appendages	comb rows, hooks
anchor (body)	sea sparkle, plankton flashing blue wherever the water is disturbed
anchor (detail)	a fern fiddlehead, a tight spiral unrolling

Sources

Thomas Brandt, Vertigo: Its Multisensory Syndromes (1991)
J. T. Reason and J. J. Brand, Motion Sickness (1975)
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (1958)
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

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