• The Metaphysics of Charles Saunders Peirce.  For an interesting modern interpretation of Peirce's system, with color graphics, go to the WEB site for A.D. Manning's Peircian science fiction novel Supposition Error.    Once on this site, click on "Cover Elements Explained" and go to the inner triangle of Peircian thought.  Also check out Peirce's Evolutionary Model of Thought.  For a WEB site on Peirce's philosophy visit Arisbe.
  • Numerical Archetypes:  This material is best covered in the assigned reading in the Webmind book.  We will refer to Jung and Nietzsche as well as Peirce.
  • For an application to chemistry check out the Periodic Table of the Elements with Java script which gives the number of electrons in each shell around the nucleus of  each element.  Another version is the Alexander Arrangement of the Elements, which uses three dimensions to better convey the numerical categories.
  • for some really exotic numerology, check Tony Smith's WEB site.  This stuff looks bizarre, but Ben tells me that at the core of his historical investigations there is something interesting: he has shown that many modern abstract algebra concepts are "archetypal" in that they arise in a lot of ancient mythology, numerology, etc., as well as in modern physics.
  • There are lots of good WEB sites on Buckminster Fuller, search for him on Yahoo.  You can actually read Fuller's book Synergestics. online.  You can also see a very brief clip from a movie about him, all he does is pronounce his name.  More interesting is this model of the molecule buckministerfulerene
  • An interesting discussion of the Fourth Dimension in Art.
  • An interesting paper by Paul L. Larsen on Connections Between Modern Physics and Modern Art in the Works of Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso
  • Salvador Dali's Persistence of memory is a painting which makes a particular impact on many people?  Why?
  • I have prepared a discussion of literary passages which may (or may not) represent different numerical archetypes.
    This class will cover the concept of Archetypes, as developed by Carl Jung and the many people who have followed up on his ideas.

    For some general background on Jung, go to the Unus Mundus WEB site.  In particular, read their discussion of the concept of Archetype (I and II).   As you can see, this is a very vague concept.  Jung was an intuitive, phenomenological thinker who write about what he perceived and felt, not a systematic thinker with a set of well defined concepts.  To work with this concept, we have to accept this mindset.

    Most fundamentally, archetypes are persistent patterns which recur in many (or, Jung suspected, all) cultures.  Jung thought they were somehow part of a "collective unconscious" but he did not really know how this worked.  Today, we have the conceptual tools to understand this idea more systematically.   Before doing that, however, we will try looking for these persistent patterns in certain bodies of myths and legend, as well as in more modern cultural products.

    One place to look is in Creation Myths which are found in many cultures.

    Another place is in Greek Mythology, which was well known to Jung and other European writers.  Jung and Freud often assumed a knowledge of Greek mythology in their writings, since this was someone all educated people had read in their era.  There are many pages on this on Yahoo.

    Archetypal images can also be found in contemporary media, including films such as Star Wars and Star Trek and TV shows such as Mash, which have characters many people feel are archetypal.  The WEB site for Manning's science fiction novel Supposition Error.  covers some of these, and puts them in a context of Peircian numerical archetypes that we discussed last week.  Look in particular at his systematizing of primary colors, TV shows, the history of philosophy and ego psychology.

    Many people find archetypal imagery in Tarot Cards, which are used to "tell the future."  They may be useful as projective devices to draw out people's buried feelings.

    For some really exotic numerology, check Tony Smith's WEB site.  This stuff looks bizarre, but the core of his historical investigations there is something interesting: he has shown that many modern abstract algebra concepts are "archetypal" in that they arise in a lot of ancient mythology, numerology, etc., as well as in modern physics..