There is an ironclad logical interconnectedness inside the ideal (Platonically speaking) world, giving solid mathematical proof to the Nietzschean mystical commonwealth of concepts. Perhaps, the same logic joins together the physical world as well. Perhaps, it is in the myelon of God’s fiat, the spinal cord of Creation. Which means that both these worlds are shot through with correlative double-headed arrows.
There is nothing extraordinary in seeing the old in what is old, or in seeing the new in what is new. But, as Nietzsche tells us in an earlier quoted maxim, “the original is not what one is the first to see as something new, but what one sees as new, when it is old.”
Granted the presence of a logical parallelism in the “old as old”--“new as new” pair, the same parallelism must necessarily magnetize and bring together the more subtle pair of seeing the new in the old, and… yes, seeing the old in the new, the latter being by no means a "trivial pursuit," either.
To begin with, in its simplest form, the phenomenon of seeing the old in the new is a fairly innocent case of mere pattern recognition. There is, of course, a most natural connection between our seeing a new thing and seeking a pattern which would allow us to make the connection between our new experience and our former experiences, by then already organized into some sort of system within our memory. Nietzsche’s Jenseits is once again availing us of this helpful elucidation:
“Whoever has traced the history of an individual science, finds a clue in its development for understanding the most ancient and common process of all ‘knowledge and cognition.’ There, as here, it is the rash hypotheses, the fictions, the good dumb will to believe, the lack of mistrust and patience that are developed first; our senses learn only late, and never learn entirely, to be subtle, faithful, and cautious organs of cognition. Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. What is new finds our senses hostile and reluctant. Just as little as a reader today reads all individual words on a page, but picks about five at random out of twenty, and ‘guesses’ the meaning, just as little do we see a tree exactly; it is so much easier for us simply to improvise some approximation of a tree.” (Jenseits 192)
(There are two separate very interesting points here, which I am offering both as an aside, rather than as a footnote, as I am not using footnotes, as a matter of principle:
The first paragraph itself requires two comments. One is about Nietzsche’s provocatively welcome use of the two key words: hypotheses and fiction, which I am myself so eager to use in the discussion of cognition and science {See my Philosophy section, where this discussion is prominent}. The other comment is about our conservative disposition: reproducing prior images most familiar to our senses, rather than registering what is new and different. Is Nietzsche right here, or do geniuses and great men of science generally differ from mediocrities and amateurs in such a quest for novelty? I wonder if, in the final analysis, when they do find their novelty, they might then want to fit it in with their prior image of reality, in the process committing that dreadful crime of hypocrisy, which Nietzsche accused Socrates of, when he noted his contempt for the irrational, while at the same time falling victim to it. Incidentally, what Nietzsche says about our cognitive process as being an insight on his part, had centuries before been presented by Hobbes, as the definition of our cognitive process.
Nietzsche’s second paragraph is very close to my own complaint about people’s reaction to my arguments, in conversations, articles, and lectures. I myself have experienced exactly what Nietzsche is writing about as being done to me, too, when people, instead of opening their senses to a revolutionary, unfamiliar idea, with a sensual tabula rasa, have been trying to fill in the blanks, that is, to put me in a familiar context. But it was exactly that context, which I had been attempting to win over, and, alas, the sad end result of this was my being misunderstood, mistaken for somebody else, misdiagnosed, and misconstrued. In other words, the context won!)
What is the most significant thing in this simplest, ground-level case, is not that we are deliberately seeking the old in the new, but that we are automatically, that is, subconsciously or semi-consciously, seeing the old in the new. There is very little "inspiration" (Biblically speaking) in our processes of breathing, digesting food, or even reproducing: animals and plants are capable of that too. Automatic pattern-recognition can be put in the same league.
A somewhat higher level of pattern-recognition faculty is exhibited by the contestants in IQ competitions at low-to-intermediate levels, where it is used deliberately and progressively effectively. Seeing is now seeking first, and finding, that is seeing, is a result of seeking.
At the highest level of pattern recognition, however, seeking becomes indistinguishable from seeing, as the superior quality of pattern recognition has now become indistinguishable from a natural instinct, and works more by inspiration than by a labored effort.
(As an amusing extrapolation, here is a fresh view of conservatism at-heart: “seeking the old in the new” as a defensive reaction to change, resulting from a general psychological hostility to novelty as such, and, seeing that change is an inevitable process under the laws of nature, seeking the old in the new therefore becomes a manner of psychological adaptation to any such change. Perhaps, more of us are “conservatives,” without either the will or the comprehension to admit it. Even the liberals…
Incidentally, the classic liberals and their more pushy brethren the progressives (not to be confused with the Progressives of Teddy Roosevelt’s fame, who were actually much more about the catchy political name than about the substance of progressivism) shouldn’t be seen in this case as part of a complementary distribution with the conservatives. By the same token, the liberals’ preoccupation with personal freedoms ought not to distinguish them from the conservatives in that aspect, either. What makes these two form the conservative-liberal contradistinction, is a relatively less significant opposition, as the liberals want to accelerate change, while the conservatives wish to impede it, preferring things to remain as they are.
There is nothing extraordinary in seeing the old in what is old, or in seeing the new in what is new. But, as Nietzsche tells us in an earlier quoted maxim, “the original is not what one is the first to see as something new, but what one sees as new, when it is old.”
Granted the presence of a logical parallelism in the “old as old”--“new as new” pair, the same parallelism must necessarily magnetize and bring together the more subtle pair of seeing the new in the old, and… yes, seeing the old in the new, the latter being by no means a "trivial pursuit," either.
To begin with, in its simplest form, the phenomenon of seeing the old in the new is a fairly innocent case of mere pattern recognition. There is, of course, a most natural connection between our seeing a new thing and seeking a pattern which would allow us to make the connection between our new experience and our former experiences, by then already organized into some sort of system within our memory. Nietzsche’s Jenseits is once again availing us of this helpful elucidation:
“Whoever has traced the history of an individual science, finds a clue in its development for understanding the most ancient and common process of all ‘knowledge and cognition.’ There, as here, it is the rash hypotheses, the fictions, the good dumb will to believe, the lack of mistrust and patience that are developed first; our senses learn only late, and never learn entirely, to be subtle, faithful, and cautious organs of cognition. Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression. What is new finds our senses hostile and reluctant. Just as little as a reader today reads all individual words on a page, but picks about five at random out of twenty, and ‘guesses’ the meaning, just as little do we see a tree exactly; it is so much easier for us simply to improvise some approximation of a tree.” (Jenseits 192)
(There are two separate very interesting points here, which I am offering both as an aside, rather than as a footnote, as I am not using footnotes, as a matter of principle:
The first paragraph itself requires two comments. One is about Nietzsche’s provocatively welcome use of the two key words: hypotheses and fiction, which I am myself so eager to use in the discussion of cognition and science {See my Philosophy section, where this discussion is prominent}. The other comment is about our conservative disposition: reproducing prior images most familiar to our senses, rather than registering what is new and different. Is Nietzsche right here, or do geniuses and great men of science generally differ from mediocrities and amateurs in such a quest for novelty? I wonder if, in the final analysis, when they do find their novelty, they might then want to fit it in with their prior image of reality, in the process committing that dreadful crime of hypocrisy, which Nietzsche accused Socrates of, when he noted his contempt for the irrational, while at the same time falling victim to it. Incidentally, what Nietzsche says about our cognitive process as being an insight on his part, had centuries before been presented by Hobbes, as the definition of our cognitive process.
Nietzsche’s second paragraph is very close to my own complaint about people’s reaction to my arguments, in conversations, articles, and lectures. I myself have experienced exactly what Nietzsche is writing about as being done to me, too, when people, instead of opening their senses to a revolutionary, unfamiliar idea, with a sensual tabula rasa, have been trying to fill in the blanks, that is, to put me in a familiar context. But it was exactly that context, which I had been attempting to win over, and, alas, the sad end result of this was my being misunderstood, mistaken for somebody else, misdiagnosed, and misconstrued. In other words, the context won!)
What is the most significant thing in this simplest, ground-level case, is not that we are deliberately seeking the old in the new, but that we are automatically, that is, subconsciously or semi-consciously, seeing the old in the new. There is very little "inspiration" (Biblically speaking) in our processes of breathing, digesting food, or even reproducing: animals and plants are capable of that too. Automatic pattern-recognition can be put in the same league.
A somewhat higher level of pattern-recognition faculty is exhibited by the contestants in IQ competitions at low-to-intermediate levels, where it is used deliberately and progressively effectively. Seeing is now seeking first, and finding, that is seeing, is a result of seeking.
At the highest level of pattern recognition, however, seeking becomes indistinguishable from seeing, as the superior quality of pattern recognition has now become indistinguishable from a natural instinct, and works more by inspiration than by a labored effort.
(As an amusing extrapolation, here is a fresh view of conservatism at-heart: “seeking the old in the new” as a defensive reaction to change, resulting from a general psychological hostility to novelty as such, and, seeing that change is an inevitable process under the laws of nature, seeking the old in the new therefore becomes a manner of psychological adaptation to any such change. Perhaps, more of us are “conservatives,” without either the will or the comprehension to admit it. Even the liberals…
Incidentally, the classic liberals and their more pushy brethren the progressives (not to be confused with the Progressives of Teddy Roosevelt’s fame, who were actually much more about the catchy political name than about the substance of progressivism) shouldn’t be seen in this case as part of a complementary distribution with the conservatives. By the same token, the liberals’ preoccupation with personal freedoms ought not to distinguish them from the conservatives in that aspect, either. What makes these two form the conservative-liberal contradistinction, is a relatively less significant opposition, as the liberals want to accelerate change, while the conservatives wish to impede it, preferring things to remain as they are.
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