Appendix I: The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy: 2. Lucretius and the Simulacrum

"Nature is...conjunctive: it expresses itself through "and"...an addition of indivisibles." (p.267)

Axiom: "Nature, to be precise, is power." (267) [My emphasis.]

D unintentionally describing the Pascal triangle diagram: "And what forms the whole if not a particular finite combination, filled with holes, which we arbitrarily believe to join all the elements of the sum?" (267)

"The elements which form this whole are contraries capable of being transformed into one another." (267)   See this post on opposition, twin valences, tragedy and farce, etc.  The two "sides" of the Mobius strip.

"There are beings and there is the void." (268)  To me, this exposition is Deleuze's greatest condemnation of Lacanian-Hegelianism, and (ironically) can be supported by Alain Badiou's work in Being and Event.

"The Nature of things is coordination and disjunction." (268)

Page 268: Analogy is akin to the eternal return (the composition and decomposition of sense).  Cf. Discussions of condensation and displacement, metaphor and metonymy, Lacan and Freud, etc.

Page 269: There is an up and down to the void/gyre.

Page 269: Clinamen == "line of flight" ("swerve").  The clinamen, being a "time smaller than the minimum of continuous time", is the pure difference ("difference-in-itself") running the whole equation ("a differential of thought"), and when unfurled (straightened (into infinite time past and future), is the Aion.

Page 270: On the relation of the swerve (clinamen) to chance (cf. dicethrow).

Our mission, our sole differentiating machine: "To determine what is infinite and what is not." (272) Read this literally, where "not" is in fact the break, the rupture, the cut, etc.  The infinite is the Aion.  In other writings, I have written how this elemental split when stratified results in different aesthetic and moral personality traits (cf. dominance in the amygdala, fight vs. flight, etc.).

Compounds "emanating from the depth...or...that detach themselves from the surface of things": http://modular.math.washington.edu/simuw06/notes/notes/elliptic_curves.png.  (273)  These elliptical curves can be used for factorization and represent a diagram of the methods (e.g. Pollard's p-1) written about in the last post.  A "perforated surface" like mouth is a perfect example of the Pascal diagram's striation. (274)

Confer here on the time "smaller than the minimum sensible time", the clinamen, etc. (274)

"Simulacra produce the mirage of a false infinite in the images which they form." (277)  Though the world might seem like "the world", it is actually the sum of images, simulacra, forming a simulacrum.  See this post on the vortex and vertigo.  As with Gabriel's Horn, what appears as infinite actually has a finite volume, though when we are within the gyre, looking into its spinning center descending infinitely, the appearance of infinitude hypnotizes us into submission: "Our belief in g-ds rests upon simulacra which seem to dance, to change their gestures, and to shout at us promising eternal punishment -- in short, to represent the infinite." (277)

Page 278: The only true infinite is Nature (the univocal).