SCIENCE  AND  PHILOSOPHY

                         PANDEMONIUM  BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.

       Merida, Venezuela, 1999.    COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
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                   CHAPTER  THIRTY-FOUR

                     HISTORY  OF  WISDOM  IX
 

Fiat Lux!  Eternal Fieri!

Eternal, infinite, archaic, dialectical explosion: Pýr, Tyr, Fire, Feuer, Fuego! Fieri, Phos, Novas and Supernovas; In, Into, Out of Nyx, of Chaos, of Cosmos.

In an infinitesimal realm of zillionfold Nothing, meteoric, metamorphic
sparks blaze the ancient Indian vrt, the old Slavic vratiti, and transhistorically belively they ignite the fiery atomic chain-reaction of universal Werden, exploding anywhere, everywhere, even far beyond the Being-Becoming and Becoming-Being of Hegel, Marx and Bloch.

Panta rhei!  Everything Flows!

In this cosmic, hylozoistic fireworks, in this panpsychic Walpurgisnight, in this panvitalistic "negation" of the Olympic Götterdämmerung, Heracleitus of Ephesus visualizes the omnifluent, dynamic thalatta of Pyr, of Fire, his omnipresent Arché. This fiery vis vitalis, this glowing-gloaming, omnivorous, patrian Principle has its matrix in cosmogonic, feminine mythology, as Marx would say, in the prehistoric "superstructure".

Let us now illuminate the cosmogonic background of the materialist philosophy of Heracleitus, in which, inter alia, concepts like "war", "strife", "logos" and "eros" will play central roles.

Nyx, Chaos, Fire

A mysterious, obscure letter in the alphabet, "N", historically illuminates highly explosive philosophic concepts. It is a rebellious, obstreperous letter. Returning to ancient Greek mythology, now, who was Miss N, Miss Nyx, who  erotically and exotically robed in her fiery night-gown hopefully "stood" in love with Heracleitus, thus procreating the concept Nothing --  Nyx, Nichts, Niks, Nix, Nada, Nihil, Nihil Ad Rem? As can be seen in our own Science  a n d
Philosophy, Nothing (Nyx) is one of our postulates, our transcendental
"arché". (See: Franz J. T. Lee, Science  a n d   Philosophy, Online Publications.)

Feared by Zeus, the King of the Gods, Nyx was a powerful cosmogonical figure, known as the princess of the obscure, of darkness; she was the female personification of the Night, Nacht, Noche, Nag. In nearly all modern patriarchal languages -- in  the moral portrayal of mostly "negative" things, persons or values --  most of the concepts beginning with "N" represent her Name, her Née, her "Negative" character: Nature, Negro, Native, Nubia, Nero, Nazi, Night, Nothing, Nihil, No, Non, Not, Negation, Neither, Nor, Never, Nefarious, Nuisance, Neutral, Nadir, Naja, Nasik, Nasalis, Njet, Net, Netscape, Newspeak, NATO, NASA, News of CNN, etc.

For modern linguists studying onomatopoeia, it would be interesting to note that nearly all "black" political leaders from the "Dark Continent", from Nubia,  have an "N" in their names: Nelson, Nujoma, Neto, Nkrumah, Nasser, Nyerere, Neville, etc.; even Xhosa colonial rebels and "witches" were called Nxele or Nonquase. This is an excellent example of the ideological, brain-laundering function of official language, a very dangerous tool of "information", "communication", "thinking", thought, theory and philosophy. Look how snarling, growling, "grrrr ...", knurren, murren, ... are  presented in the following words: horrisonant, horrid, horrent, horrible, horrifying, horrendous, horror, hirrient, sorrow, terror, terrorist! All associated with an Arab, a Saddam Hussein, an Osama Bin Laden!! In Plato's Kratylos, Socrates explained to Hermogenes and Kratylos how words are coined, from what they are derived and how they function in social reality.

Similarly, in ancient times, Nyx had many names, one of them was the "Yawning Gap", the "Gaping Abyss", that is, primeval Chaos itself. She was the "Great Grandmother", who gave birth to the "Great Mother", Gaea or Gaia. Lately, according to some censured, patrian mythological versions, experts even deny that she, as Chaos, gave birth to Gaea, to the Earth, to Nature.

Feminine Nyx versus Masculine Chaos

Now, let us see how the dialogical healthy relation between Nyx  a n d  Chaos, between Nature  a n d  Society was destroyed, maltreated and perverted by the labour process.

Of course, intellectual labour competition -- materialism, idealism, nihilism, etc. -- was already rife in Ancient Greece, hence we have various competing, conflicting, cosmogonic versions concerning Nyx and Chaos. Hesiod's Theogony (around 700 B.C.) is the only cosmogony which had survived in more than doubtful fragments. In this work, he (or the official ancient cosmogonic club) recorded the generation of Greek gods until Zeus and his divine contemporaries.

How does Hesiod explain Chaos, the masculine version of the female Nyx,
in his Theogony? How did "Great Men", Champions like Charles, Christopher, Christ or Christian become associated with heroic, noble Chaos?
 

According to him, Chaos is either Primordial Emptiness or the Abyss of Tartarus, of Hades, of the Underworld. Thus, strictly in the style of the biblical genesis, in the beginning was Chaos, and he, like Yahweh or God the Father, gave birth to Gaea (Earth, Nature) and Eros (Desire, Lust). Then this patriarchal Epigenesis continued: Gaea produced Uranus, the Mountains, and Neptune, the Sea. From Gaea's subsequent erotic union with Uranus were born the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hecatoncheires, etc. ...

Thus, expressed in literature and arts, the historical social falsification began, the ideological infowar was launched. Now, suddenly, Eros, like Jesus Christ, became the son of Chaos, of an effeminated, voluptuous, transformed Nyx, and he was no more the offspring of Gaea, of Earth, of Nature.  However, later some uncensured traditions still baptized him as the son of Aphrodite, also called Minerva, Diana or Venus, the goddess of sexual love and beauty. These archaic versions did not even bother to give him a divine father. However, because of the well-known exemplary lustful life of the Olympic gods, at random we could choose her lascivious lover among the following:  Zeus (the King of the Gods), Ares (God of War and of Battle) and Hermes (Messenger God of Wealth and Communications). These glorious, noble titles, reflecting future politico-economico-military social structures, express very well current Corporate America and its "New Wars". Surely, at that historical stage of development, the above reflected the profound social changes and contradictions in ancient Greek society, the labour agony of the transformation of the slave-owning society into the Periclean Age, towards
the cosmopolitan "imperialism" of Alexander the Great, further towards agro-productive, absolutist Roman Catholic feudalism, and eventually, towards oligopolic, metropolitan, corporate globalization.

Concerning Heracleitus, further elaborating the patriarchal rape of natural, feminine beauty, we should note the following: according to ancient Greek mythology, a famous Titan was Iapetus, who fathered Prometheus and Epimetheus. It was his son, Prometheus, who stole Pýr, Fire, from the Gods, from the Olympus, and gave it to the earthly beings, to the philosopher Heracleitus. Zeus, fearing that the earthly creatures would become just "like one of us", would eat from the proverbial fiery "tree of knowledge", as a neutralizing divine gift, as mind and thought control, sent them a huge Pandora Box full of lovely, wonderful "goodies". Ever thereafter, for the "wretched of the earth", as we all know, in this divine box, now only Hope remains, as the gift of the gods, of the holy ghosts, as delightful never-coming divine succour in spe. This then is the mythological-philosophical genealogy from the cosmogonic, feminine Nyx, Chaos, to the philosophic, masculine Fire, to the Logos of Heracleitus. Let's proceed with his gnome: panta rhei.

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