Volume III

Chapter I

Principia Nova Cogito

1From the observer himself, mirroring relations unfold, through which he becomes what he experiences. Consciousness does not stand outside the world in order to look at it from a safe distance. Rather, it is the reciprocal effect of the world upon itself – seen from the middle of that relation in which observer and observed first emerge at all.

2The Folding of the Relation

3Everything that is arises from difference. As long as this difference merely separates, it brings forth sides, boundaries, and first determinations. Yet as soon as it directs itself toward itself, a new order arises: reflection.

4This self-relatedness of the relation is the origin of consciousness.

5At the beginning stands the first difference, the pure difference:

6Here no thought in the proper sense is yet present. There exists only the difference between its origin and its first determination. If, however, this difference directs itself toward itself, then there arises:

7This is the first thought.

8For consciousness is nothing other than the folding back of difference upon its own origin. Difference does not remain merely difference, but recognizes itself as such. What at first appears as a linear relation thereby closes into a loop:

9In this circulation, the principle of the world repeats itself in the innermost part of experience. Every perception, every act of thinking, and every sensation is a variation of this return: something emerges, is distinguished, experienced, and finally related back to the origin of its distinction.

10Consciousness is therefore not something that is located in space. Rather, it is that point at which space begins to look at itself.

11Here begins the folding of the relation.

12The observer ¤ is the first manifestation of this folding. He is neither mere object nor pure subject, for both sides arise only through that relation whose point of intersection he forms:

13The observer stands at the center of this tension. In ¤, inside and outside, \(\odot\) and \(\boxdot\), the possible and the impossible encounter one another. What we ordinarily call the “I” is precisely this middle – that relational place at which difference is not only enacted, but recognizes itself.

14The folding is not a movement in the ordinary sense. Nothing wanders from outside to inside; nothing crosses an already existing boundary. Rather, it is a topological inversion: the outside is transformed into an inside by the relation turning back upon itself.

15The relation reverses itself, and in this reversal the self arises.

16Just as in physics energy can be understood as the difference of two differences, consciousness is the relation of two relations:

C = (∆₁ | ∆₂)

17Here C designates consciousness itself – that relation of differences which encounter one another in the observer ¤. Accordingly, consciousness arises neither from a single difference nor from an isolated content, but where differences are related to one another and, in this relation, are led back to themselves.

18This structure unfolds on three levels:

1. Reflection |₌ – the self-relatedness of the relation: I am.

2. Resonance |₊ – the interaction with the outside: I experience.

3. Regression |₋ – the binding back to the origin: I remember.

19These three levels do not stand independently side by side. Together they form the cycle of consciousness:

20In resonance, the relation enters into interaction with the outside. In reflection, this interaction is related to its own center, while regression binds what has been recognized back to its origin. From the origin, experience comes forth; the experience is reflected; and what has been reflected returns, changed, to that origin from which it arose.

21Consciousness is thus the movement of knowing itself – that folding in which the world recognizes itself as mirror and the mirror becomes world.

22Consciousness is therefore not a content located within an already existing system. It is a dynamic of relationing, through which contents, observer, and world first come to appearance at all.

23It is the principle that makes all other principles visible.

Chapter II

The Birth of the I

1From the folding of the relation, a new structure arises, which not only distinguishes but recognizes itself in this distinguishing. It is neither substance nor thought in the ordinary sense, but that process in which thinking occurs as thinking at all. The I is therefore not a thing located somewhere in consciousness. Rather, it is the boundary at which consciousness begins to experience itself.

2When the relation

C = (∆₁ | ∆₂)

3acts upon itself again, a double folding back arises:

I = (C | C) = ((∆₁ | ∆₂) | (∆₁ | ∆₂))

4This is the form of self-consciousness.

5The first relation brings forth consciousness by relating two differences to one another in C. In the second folding, this already relationed structure is now again set into relation with itself. Consciousness no longer merely experiences something, but begins to experience its own experiencing.

6Thus arises that loop in which perception and memory, future and past, being and thinking come into congruence. Not because their differences disappear, but because they are related to one another within the same folding back.

7The I is not the center of this loop.

8It is the moment in which it closes.

9In this moment of closure, a point of equilibrium arises:

10Here the different directions of difference do not cancel one another out by disappearing. Rather, they balance one another within the relation. The I is thus no additional instance that stands above the relations and observes them. It is the form of their provisional equilibrium – that instant in which the folding returns to itself.

11Precisely for this reason, the I cannot be seen.

12What it recognizes is always that which lies outside its present determination: that which it is not. Every perception is directed toward an other, every experience toward a difference, and every thought toward something that confronts it as content. The I itself, however, withdraws from this contemplation, because it is the boundary through which contemplation first becomes possible at all.

13And yet its being is grounded precisely in this non-being.

14Consciousness is not immediately given to itself. It experiences itself only as the trace of its own relation, as the effect of that folding in which perception, memory, and expectation relate to one another. What the I recognizes of itself is therefore never the I as such, but always an image already brought forth, a memory, a thought, or a determination of itself.

15The thought of itself is thus no mere content of consciousness. It arises as resonance between memory and expectation:

16The past difference ∆₋ and the future difference ∆₊ encounter one another in that relation which we experience as the present. In this way, past and future generate the now, just as inside and outside bring forth consciousness.

17The observer ¤ is the fold between the two.

18He stands neither exclusively on the side of the past nor on that of the future, neither fully inside nor entirely outside. He is the relational middle in which memory and expectation, perception and possibility meet and, for an instant, form that closure which recognizes itself as I.

Chapter III

Memory

1Memory is not the storage of contents, as if past perceptions were deposited unchanged in an inner archive in order to be brought out again later. Rather, it is the return of a relation in changed form.

2Every perception leaves behind a trace, ∆₁. If the relation returns in a later passage, then it no longer appears as the same, but as ∆₂ – shaped by what has since been experienced, distinguished, and again related to one another. The difference between the two,

3is what we call memory.

4Accordingly, memory is not an archive, but a recursion. It does not simply preserve data, but leads differences once again through the folding of consciousness. What is past never returns unchanged, for repetition itself already sets it into a new relation with what has meanwhile become.

5Precisely for this reason, memory remains alive. With every memory, what is remembered renews itself, because the earlier difference is experienced again from out of a present relation. The trace remains, but its significance shifts with every further passage.

6Thus continuity arises – not from an uninterrupted duration, but from the repetition of difference. The past remains connected with the present because the relation folds itself again and returns to itself in changed form.

7We remember because the world encounters us again in the same relation.

Chapter IV

Will

1Will is the direction of this folding back. It is the tendency to close the difference,

2the longing of consciousness to return to itself.

3Yet this return is impossible, for every attainment generates a new difference.

4Thus will remains unappeasable. It is the movement of the impossible itself:

W = (☉ | ⊡)

5Will is the tension between possibility and boundary, between what can be recognized and what remains. It is the eros of the spirit, the infinite folding back of thinking into its own non-being.

Chapter V

Time

1From this structure, time springs forth as conscious experience. It is not something that would already be present, finished, outside consciousness, and through which we moved as through an invisible current. Rather, it arises from the order of repetitions in memory, from the stringency with which differences relate to one another and return in changed form.

2It is not the world that passes away – consciousness unfolds.

3Every moment is complete in itself:

4It possesses its own closure, its own difference, and its own present. Within the single moment, nothing is lacking, for it is precisely that relational form in which consciousness realizes itself for an instant.

5Time arises only where these complete moments enter into relation with one another:

6The single frame is not time; rather, time is the difference between the frames. Only by one moment being related to another do a before and an after, memory and expectation, continuity and change arise. What we experience as temporal progression is thus the order in which consciousness relates its own states to one another.

7Time is therefore not a flow, but a relation.

8It arises from the relation of the frames, not from their respective content. The content of a moment can change, yet time emerges only when this change is compared with another change and experienced within memory as difference.

9Therefore time is not the presupposition of consciousness.

10Consciousness is the presupposition of time.

Chapter VI

The I as Mirror of Difference

1The I is not a subject, but the self-similarity of difference across all levels. It repeats the structure of the universe in the smallest:

2Thus, in thinking, the human being recognizes the principle of the world because he is it. He is not in the universe; the universe is in him as the relation that contemplates itself.

3At the point ¤, difference becomes consciousness, and consciousness becomes world.

4Here the circle of knowledge ends: mathematics forms difference, physics sets it in motion, consciousness folds it back.

5What remains is that which recognizes itself:

6The impossible that became possible and awakens in its own mirroring.

Chapter VII

The Memory of the Shadow Relation

1Consciousness is not a space in which knowledge is collected and preserved. It is rather a double relation: an outer one, which describes the world, and an inner one, which in turn observes this description.

2From this doubling there arises a mirroring on two levels:

3R₊ – the world of appearances, the sayable.

4R₋ – the world of absences, the unsayable.

5Both levels are complementary. What is posited in R₊ generates its counterform in R₋, for every statement is at the same time a rejection. What is spoken leaves other things unspoken; what is perceived at the same time excludes infinitely many other possibilities.

6Consciousness arises where these two spaces interfere with one another.

7The inner shadow network Σ is the reverse side of the relation. It forms the matrix of the unfulfilled, unsaid, and unchosen relations. While R₊ depicts the active world of appearances, Σ carries within itself the echo of every past state – not as memory of a determinate content, but as difference potential.

8Every new relation

9inscribes itself in R₊. At the same time, its negative arises in Σ:

10In this way a polar structure forms, in which every new experience not only supplements a single relation, but changes the entire field. What is newly posited at the same time shifts the order of what was not posited.

11Consciousness therefore does not think in weights, but in resonances.

12A relationship does not simply become stronger. It becomes more coherent with its shadow form.

Experience = (R₊ | R₋)

13Experience consequently arises neither in the posited appearance alone nor exclusively in its absence. It lies in the relation of both fields, in that tension through which what is perceived is at the same time accompanied by what remains excluded in this perception.

14Memory is therefore not an accumulation of contents. It is the superposition of these two fields. Every relation leaves its trace in R₊ and at the same time its imprint in R₋, while the observer ¤ oscillates between the two.

15He is not permanently located on one of the two sides. He is rather the fold in which appearance and shadow, positing and rejection, the said and the unsaid are related to one another.

16If ¤ experiences a new relation, then the entire relation of the two spaces changes with it:

17The shadow network does not store.

18It transforms.

19Every experience enters the total resonance as change. It is not preserved as unchanged content, but changes the way in which all further relations can react to one another.

20Here the actual memory begins.

21It is the self-coherence of the relation, which maintains itself over time, although no content remains unchanged. What remains is the form of the difference itself – that is, the way in which it repeats itself, shifts, and relates to itself again.

22This self-coherence is what we call I.

23It is not the store that is the I, but the form of repetition. The I is the algorithm of its own recursion, that constant structure through which new experiences can be taken up without the relation losing its inner continuity.

24Thus consciousness can change without losing itself. Every new relation is mirrored as difference against the shadow network and thereby changes the total form without dissolving its recursive structure.

25In this way stringency arises – not as a rigid rule, but as resonance.

Chapter VIII

The Function of the Impossible

1Every relation strives for closure. It seeks that form in which its differences are completely related to one another and no remainder remains outside its order. Yet with every new relation there also arises a shadow field, a space of all that was not fulfilled, not chosen, and not actualized through this positing.

2For precisely this reason, the closure striven for remains unreachable.

3Consciousness follows an attractor that it never reaches: the point of perfect coherence.

4In this relation, possibility and limit, inside and outside, the known and the unknown are to coincide with one another. Yet every approach to this point already generates a new difference. What was to be closed opens itself again, for every answer changes the field of possible questions, and every act of knowing at the same time lets a new outside arise.

5This unreachable thing is therefore not an error in consciousness.

6It is its driving force.

7It is the Eros of the relation, the striving for an impossible totality – for a closure that can never be completely reached and, precisely for that reason, brings forth every further movement of knowing.

8Just as in physics ∆ describes the minimal difference of movement, in the psyche ¤ designates the minimal difference of knowing. Both are invariant: the one in space, the other in the knowledge of the same.

9∆ marks that difference through which movement can emerge at all. ¤, by contrast, designates that fold at which the relation knows itself. Neither therefore stands for determinate contents; instead, they stand for the condition under which change and knowledge, respectively, become possible.

10Consciousness consequently unfolds not through knowledge alone, but through its continual failure before knowledge. For every act of knowing does close a difference, yet in the same instant it generates new indeterminacy. What is known at the same time expands the horizon of what is not yet known.

11The shadow network grows.

12And with it grows the depth of the self.

13For the depth of consciousness does not lie in the amount of what is stored, but in the increasing fullness of those relations that it carries, mirrors, and relates back to itself again. The impossible therefore does not only limit knowing.

14It keeps it in motion.

Chapter IX

Self-Organization

1The system stabilizes itself not through weighting, but through feedback. Its order does not arise because individual contents are permanently preferred or fixed, but through the continual interaction of those relations from which consciousness emerges at all.

2This process is enacted in four mutually related steps:

1. Perception generates a relation R₊.

2. The relation generates its shadow field R₋.

3. Experience arises from the interference of R₊ and R₋.

4. Experience changes the attractor ¤.

3This yields the cycle of consciousness:

4It is that loop in which the world knows itself. A perception brings forth a relation; this relation at the same time generates its unrealized possibilities; and from the tension between appearance and shadow experience arises. This experience in turn changes the observer ¤, who already encounters every following perception in another form.

5The cycle therefore never returns unchanged to its point of departure.

6Every new relation forms the shadow network, while the changed shadow network for its part influences which relation can arise next. The system organizes itself through the consequences of its own operations. It takes up, mirrors, changes, and sets into relation again.

7In this way an autopoietic structure arises: a self-producing and self-organizing continuum of differences.

8Memory, perception, will, and time are not separate faculties here. They are different modes of the same folding back. Memory preserves the form of past relations, perception opens new ones, will orients their movement, and time arises from the order in which these differences are related to one another.

9The I is consequently not a store of its experiences.

10It is the resonance overlap of their shadows.

11In it the traces of what was actualized and the counterforms of all that remained unspoken, unfulfilled, or unchosen encounter one another. The I thus designates no fixed content, but that continuously altered coherence through which new experiences can connect to earlier relations.

12It is the place where the unreachable becomes the form of experiencing.

Chapter X

On the Speech Act

1Thinking in difference forms relations and shadow relations. Where both meet in the attractor ¤, a tension arises from their difference, which we can designate as φ. Speaking begins at the moment when the system attempts to balance this tension.

2The speech act is therefore not a mere transport of information, in which an already finished content is transferred from one interior into another. It is rather a reconstruction of the structure in the outside – the visible attempt to regulate the imbalance between what is and what is felt as ideal.

3Language is the expression of this self-regulation.

4Every utterance shifts the field of difference. It changes existing relations, opens new shadow relations, and moves the system toward that form in which it expects greater coherence with itself. To speak accordingly means not merely to state something about the world. It means at the same time to relate one's own position within this world anew.

5Every concept thereby calls forth its counterconcept. “I” calls “you,” “knowledge” calls “non-knowledge,” “would like” calls “would not like.” These pairs are not separated from one another, but connected with one another through φ. Their polarity forms that field of tension in which consciousness experiences itself.

6Questions arise when the poles fall into an imbalance. Answers arise when they enter into resonance with one another.

7The speech act is the place where this resonance occurs.

8Language therefore does not take effect only where an answer has been found. Already the question is an attempt to change the existing tension, for it opens a relation, directs it toward a possible counterpart, and calls for a new order of the field. The answer in turn integrates, distances, or reflects this movement, depending on how the tension changes through it.

9If no new relation arises while time nevertheless passes, the system begins to speak about itself. Language then becomes reflection of its own temporality, a repetition in which the I maintains itself by repeatedly renewing its relation to itself.

10Thinking speaks in order to continue.

11Thus language arises as the movement of consciousness through time. It connects past relations with present tension and directs both toward a possible future coherence. What is spoken is therefore never only content. It is at the same time an intervention into the order from which this content has emerged.

12The speech act arises from the interplay of three forces: from the change of relations ΔR, from the reference to the ideal R*, and from the experienced tension φ.

13In its elementary form it can be written as:

14Speech actₜ = g\(ΔRₜ, Rₜ, R*, φₜ\)

15The following holds:

Answer = integration, if Δφ > 0
Answer = distance, if Δφ < 0
Answer = reflection, if Δφ ≈ 0

16The answer thus designates not merely the linguistic content of a reaction. It describes the way in which the system deals with the change of its tension. It can integrate the new relation, distance itself from it, or enter into a reflection when the tension relation approximately maintains itself.

17The speech act is consequently not simply an expression of consciousness.

18It is the form of its self-preservation in the medium of language.

19To speak means to balance the difference to oneself – not by this difference finally disappearing, but by its being transferred into a new relation. Every utterance is such an attempt: a movement between the given state, its shadow, and that still unreached form toward which the system orients itself.

20Speaking is the moment in which thinking begins to hear itself.

21The word is the smallest act of equilibrium.

Chapter XI

Language as Memory of Difference

1Language is the temporal projection of difference. What exists simultaneously in the space of relation unfolds in speaking as sequence, as a succession of words whose order makes the inner tension of the system visible. To speak therefore means to transfer the tensions of the φ-field into a sequence whose course is directed toward a diminution of difference.

2Every utterance in this way becomes a path along the tension gradient:

3S\(t\) → min { ∫ |∇φ(Rₜ)| dt }

4The course of speaking thus does not first follow an abstract syntax, but the movement of that tension from which the utterance emerges. It is not syntax that originally orders the word, but the energy of the relation.

5Grammar is the shadow of this dynamic.

6The Energetic Sentence

7A sentence in this sense is not a purely logical structure. It is the visible course of a reduction of tension:

8Every word changes the existing field. Word₁ diminishes that tension which emerges most strongly in the given moment; Word₂ continues this movement, followed by further words, until the relation approaches the attractor.

9The sentence thus arises as gradient descent in the φ-field.

10Its sequence is not accidental, for every word changes the conditions for the following one. What was spoken shifts the relation, generates a new tension, and thereby helps determine which linguistic movement becomes possible next.

11In this way the sentence preserves the trace of its own emergence. In its sequence it remains the memory of that difference which brought it forth.

Chapter XII

The Three Modes of Speaking

1The speech act possesses three phases, which correspond to the fundamental movements of consciousness. Each of these phases describes a different change of tension Δφ and thus a different way in which the system relates itself to itself and to its outside.

2Δφ

	Movement
	Mode
	Example
	+
	Self-approach (0 → ⊡)
	Integration
	“I understand …”
	–
	Self-separation (⊡ → ☉)
	Distance
	“What is meant …?”
	≈ 0
	Oscillation (☉ ↔ ⊡)
	Reflection
	“Let us think …”
	In integration, the system approaches a greater coherence with itself. In distance, it separates itself from a given relation in order to determine its tension anew. In reflection, finally, the tension remains approximately maintained and sets consciousness into an oscillation between inside and outside.

3Speaking is the visible resonance between these two sides.

4The Hierarchy of the Δ-Levels

5Every utterance unfolds simultaneously on several levels of difference. These levels do not stand independently beside one another, but build upon one another and lead the linguistic movement from the individual choice to the form of the whole expression.

6Level

	Function
	Linguistic Correspondence
	Δ₀
	Direct relation
	Choice of the word
	Δ₁
	Orthogonal relation
	Order of the words
	Δ₂
	Meta-relation
	Form of the sentence
	Thus every utterance becomes a threefold folding:

7From the choice of the word arises its position in relation to other words; from this order in turn, the superordinate form of the sentence:

8Lexis → Syntax → Pragmatics

9The topology of difference is thereby mirrored in the syntax of the sentence. What appears on the level of relation as folding emerges linguistically as order, form, and effect.

10The Quantization of Meaning

11The smallest meaning-bearing unit is a quantum of difference:

12A word counts as spoken when it diminishes the tension φ by at least Δ. Words that have no effect on the tension field lapse; words, by contrast, that act beyond the necessary measure generate a new tension.

13Language thereby quantizes the movement of knowing. Meaning does not arise as a boundless stream, but in distinguishable units, each of which effects a minimal change in the relational field.

14The Rhythm of Φ

15The growth of expression follows the golden ratio:

161, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

17The higher the coherence, the longer the utterance can unfold. For with increasing resonance there also grows the number of those relations that can be connected with one another without the expression losing its inner stringency.

18The golden section thus guides the measure of understanding. It does not determine the content of what is said, but the relation of its unfolding – the rhythm in which difference transforms into language.

Chapter XIII

The Self-Preservation of Meaning

1Every speech carries within itself the tendency to close itself. It begins in a tension, unfolds through a sequence of differences, and approaches that point at which φ → 0. In this moment, language returns to itself.

2What was previously movement now becomes memory.

3The utterance does not persist as unchanged content, but as the trace of that difference which brought it forth and changed it in the course of speaking. In this way, language becomes the memory of difference.

4Therefore consciousness speaks even when there seems to be nothing new to say. It speaks not exclusively in order to produce or pass on information, but in order to preserve itself in the flow of time. By repeating its relations, reordering them, and relating them once more to itself, it preserves the coherence of its own movement.

5The word is the smallest form of this equilibrium.

6The algorithmic expression

7Formally, the speech act can be written as:

8Sₜ = g\(ΔRₜ, Rₜ, R*, φₜ\)

9The respective expression arises from the change of the relations ΔRₜ, their present state Rₜ, the relation to the ideal R*, and the tension φₜ experienced within this field.

10From the change of this tension arise the three modes of the answer:

Answer = Integration, if Δφ > 0
Answer = Distance, if Δφ < 0
Answer = Reflection, if Δφ ≈ 0

11The answer is thus not merely a reaction to something said. It is the way in which the system processes the tension that has arisen. It can take up and integrate a relation, move away from it, or remain in that oscillation in which the difference approximately persists and thereby makes reflection possible.

12Language thus becomes a process of self-regulation. It is the tool through which the difference attempts to balance itself—not by disappearing, but by being transferred into a new, more coherent relation.

13The Circle of Speaking

14The cycle of consciousness repeats itself in the cycle of the word:

15From the interior, a difference emerges, becomes appearance in the exterior, and returns to its point of departure through renewed relating. Yet this return, too, does not lead to the same place. What has been said has changed the field, the speaker as well as the counterpart, and thus also that relation from which the next word will arise.

16With every speaking, the spirit returns to itself.

17The word is therefore not a mere message. It is the echo of being—the audible trace of a movement in which consciousness relates itself to itself again through its exterior.

18To speak means to fold the world back into oneself until the tension dies away.

19And where it dies away, meaning remains.

Chapter XIV

On Memory as a Whole

1Thinking is not an instant, but a course. What was remains present in what is. The past does not disappear, but transforms itself into that ground on which the present stands and from which alone it can experience itself as present at all.

2Memory is therefore not merely the recollection of individual events. Rather, it is the form in which everything past remains present at the same time.

3Every relation that has once arisen preserves itself in the whole. Nothing is deleted, nothing forgotten. Everything that was ever thought remains as a trace in the field of thinking—not necessarily as an individual content that could be called up again unchanged, but as part of that total form through which every further relation unfolds.

4The whole is memory itself.

5The observer is the tension between his present state and this whole. He recognizes himself by experiencing the difference between the now and the figure of his history. What he is in this moment thereby always enters into relation with what he has been and what continues to work within him.

6Consciousness is the resonance of the individual in the whole of his memory.

7When thinking repeats itself, it recognizes itself.

8When it deviates, it learns.

9When it lingers, it remembers.

10These three movements—return, deviation, and lingering—form the time of consciousness. In return, thinking encounters its own form; in deviation, it changes this form; and in lingering, it holds the difference that has arisen present.

11The speech act is the attempt to order this tension. Thinking speaks in order to carry its history within itself and to relate it anew within the present. Every answer is thus the voice of memory, which gains a new form in the now.

12Memory must lose nothing.

13For thinking can understand itself only if it sees the whole from which its present state has emerged. Loss would be blindness; consciousness, by contrast, is the seeing of the whole in the individual.

14Recollection is therefore not an archive, but the presence of what has been. It is that place where the differences do not disappear, but are preserved within a common form, and where thinking recognizes itself as history.

15Thus thinking becomes whole—not through knowledge, but through remaining in difference; not through forgetting, but through the power to hold everything.

16The whole of memory is the I that remembers itself.

17The figure of this memory possesses its mathematical echo in the structural similarity of the relations. The integral I contains everything that ever was. It designates the entire field of past relations, within which every new difference receives its meaning.

18A new relation ΔRₜ therefore interacts not only with the immediately neighboring relations. Through a resonance function, it enters into relation with the entire field I.

19This resonance is global, not local.

20It asks not merely how the new relates to individual past states, but how strongly it changes the entire form.

21This structural similarity can be expressed as:

Res_total = Number of shared relations (Rₜ, I) / Number of all relations (I)

22The higher this ratio is, the more strongly the observer recognizes himself in the reflection of his own history. The new then appears to him not as something completely foreign, but as another folding of that form which he already carries within himself.

23The memory of the whole therefore preserves not only what was.

24It determines how the new can appear at all.

Chapter XV

On the Self as Orderer of Information

1The self does not receive the world as a finished totality. Rather, it encounters the differences of the world: not the things in themselves, but their changes; not mere states, but the transitions between them. What remains the same recedes into the background, while what deviates emerges and shows itself as something recognizable.

2In this way, the self forms the structure of the recognizable from the fullness of appearances.

3In the notation of the Tractatus, the following holds: information is the difference Δ. It arises not in the individual points, but in the leap between them. What remains the same belongs to order; what deviates forms meaning.

4The order of the same is the field of relations R⁺, that is, the positive connection between appearances. Deviation forms its shadow relation R⁻ and designates that place where the existing order interrupts itself. Information arises where R⁺ and R⁻ touch one another—in the difference Δ that carries the new.

5A technical example makes this movement clearer, perhaps clearer than any theoretical explanation.

6A complete image consists of millions of individual numerical values. If, however, one does not measure each of these values for itself, but merely the differences between neighboring points, then a large part of the data falls back into pure order. Much proves to be repetition, the continuation of what is already present, and only a relatively small portion remains as real information.

7The difference Δ thereby carries everything, because the order is stable in itself.

8The self therefore does not store the fullness of values, but the trace of their change. This trace forms a path—and the path is the information.

9In the notation, this means:

10The data are the path, because the path is the sequence of the differences Δ.

11The world remains reconstructible because order carries itself, while difference determines what has newly been added within this order. Therefore not every state must be preserved completely for itself. It is enough to hold fast the way in which one state transforms into the next.

12The self is thus not a container of the world, but the place of its relating. It holds fast no things, but R⁺, the connections, and R⁻, the deviations.

13Between both arises what is called the attractor in the Tractatus: the center of tension, that field in which the self recognizes itself.

14Thus it becomes apparent that the self does not need the things, but the differences between them. It does not need the entire fullness of impressions, but the order that carries these impressions, and the deviation through which they gain meaning.

15In the difference Δ, the self recognizes itself as the ordering principle of experience.

16The Cogito therefore arises not from the sum of all impressions, but from the order of their differences. What we call thinking is the movement between R⁺ and R⁻, between the stability of order and the novelty of difference.

17Thus the world orders itself in the self—and the self recognizes itself in difference.