Of Representation

The "aesthetic" representation of the world is attractive because it filters human character into "things." What an artist (represented) copies is a personal representation of what they see. The most realistic of representations is never real; it always diverges from reality and is merely an interpretation of the senses. However, humans identify "things" through their representation. And with this, they are impressed, as the perception of an external perspective on a thing through which we identify that "thing" is a gateway to the claustrophobia of the unique understanding we believe we possess.

Aristotle wrote that things are similar because of their differences, in an attempt to explain that the inherent reality of a "thing" lies in the elements/categories it encompasses. These elements are difficult to define, as a set of things always presents differences. Similarity lies in how these differences are negligible, imprecise, or identifiable. The art of categorizing is a construction of levels of perception, where "common sense" discards aspects and exaggerates characteristics. In essence, all things are equally similar or equally different in the infinity of characteristics. We can assert that two stones are different because they are in different parts of space, or that they are the same because both are in distinct parts of space. Similarity is a guiding arrow within consensual aesthetic patterns in the realms of space, time, body, and form.

Can we not claim that "one" stone is not one but two exactly identical stones coexisting in the same space, time, body, and form? And when we say two, we mean three, four, five, a thousand! After all, what is our concept of body, our guiding definition? Just as Euclidean geometry is to Geometry in general, there are also laws in representation by which humans define bodies, similarities, and differences.

And all these definitions elevate ontology to a metaphysical cause, as the laws under which we define sciences are themselves products of laws.