Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual' ii

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

Now I can say: "This year, Hodges' model will be presented at WCCS 6th World Conference on Complex Systems", so current reading needs to match this project. And, it does. In spades, in fact c/o and with thanks to Edinburgh University Press. Look at chapter 1! 'Chaos' with Mandelbrot fractals, smooth space drawing from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. For readers unfamiliar with the Deleuzian oeuvre, abbreviations of texts that feature in Bill Ross's book Order and the Virtual are listed (xii) and includes key sources by Michel Serres, Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. This works as you mentally take a note, of work to lookup. Almost twenty years ago, I related some ideas of Michel Serres to Hodges' model:

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109. 

Ross discusses the extent and proximity of Deleuze's thought to chaos, complexity theory and science more generally as identified by commentators. Now up to chapter 4, it would have helped to have a look at the bibliography at the book's end. Deleuze saw how his work resonated with chaos theory. Steve Strogatz's book (now in a 3rd edition):

Strogatz, S.H. (2015) Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Application to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering. 2^nd edition. Perseus Books Publishing, Cambridge. 

- explains in the introduction how 'home computing' contributed to the aesthetic appeal of fractals, which could display incredible patterns derived from seemingly simple mathematics. Even though, the programs often required many hours of running to deliver their results.

In the late 1980s I was fascinated with a subscription to Fractal Report:

https://stephen.shawweb.co.uk/Fractalreportindex.html

The relevance for me of Order and the Virtual is apparent on page 1, Deleuze and Guattari's thought having an immediate transdisciplinary application, crossing boundaries, and the creation of regions of bifurcation. Ross connects Deleuze's thought and Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers' text:

Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. London: Heinemann, 1984 

Ross is encouraging (to me and for Hodges' model), as he notes how the notions may be inexact, but they are nonetheless rigorous. Spanning as they do, philosophy, science - what is scientific(? - itself a boundary - demarcation) and artistic. I've often thought of Hodges' model as filled with folds, and multiple bifurcations. It looks like Bill Ross is going help me to isolate several, and possibly make my search more efficient (the latter really would assist). The memorial event held in Manchester last September was revalatory. Since the early 2000s I'd grown to  really appreciate the availability of books by Michel Serres. I was not aware of the force behind the Clinamen Press, which Bill Ross established in 1999. 'Clinamen' is a useful concept too, which I have encountered previously, through Serres and Lucretius. 

Readers new to philosophy, sociology and the development of ideas must often grapple with a new and specific vocabulary. This is a primary purpose of such texts. On page 2 the springboard is sprung, the Event is key in Deleuzian scholarship. The Event is a force for creative and disruptive force for thought,  idea generation and creativity. The Event is experienced in our current 'realities' of: time and space (Kronos) where things are actualised, and the virtual (Aion) - the pure Event. This lack of hesitation is welcome. Our 'virtual' world quickly provides access to reading:

parrhesia 27 · 2017 · 1-12
extract from the birth of physics
michel serres, translated by david webb, with an introduction by bill ross
https://parrhesiajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/parrhesia27_serres.pdf

Where you have bifurcations, you have convergences and divergences, stasis, state - stasis or not, paths, a series and metrics. We are reminded that science is not just about theory - metaphysics, it is, sleeves rolled-up about doing too; as I've noted in subsequent reading. As 'chaos' predicts, there is no let up,  the Choasmos, quickly follows. I'm thinking of a 'situation' clinically as a rollercoaster - 'constant displacement' seeking a difference, and repetition, the ravages of alcohol, dementia, low mood, psychosis, obsession and compulsive 'states'. The chaosmos is central in Hodges' model, although as both continua and oppositions. Ross explains how Deleuze's chaosmos is not necessarily scientific, but belongs to the ancient cosmologies of the Greeks (p.3). I thought of flux here. 'Parity' is not just a physical metric, but a quality that acts, seeks resolution - equilibrium(?) - between the mental chaos and physical chaos.*

Thinkers like Deleuze 'trap' words, concepts, in boxes, drawing from other other sources (for chaosmos - with Guattari again); then they can be examined and tested for their scope, application, meaning and association. Hodges' model provides a trap, for any situation. Not as specific as a physicist's ion (or Penning) trap, but the model can act as a series of holistic traps. To provide a metric of holistic bandwidth.

*Of course, equilibrium is never found - until the 'End'; such is the nature of flux. 

More to follow...

Bill Ross (2024) Order and the Virtual: The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-order-and-the-virtual.html

Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual' i

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

'ORDER and the VIRTUAL'

The preface, pp.ix-xi - 'Playing Cortázarian Hopscotch' begins:

'Gilles Deleuze argued that the most significant characteristic of an encounter is that it forces us to think. Order and the Virtual dramatises multiple encounters between the philosophies of Deleuze, Michel Serres, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Leibniz and Lucretius, and the scientific theories of general relativity, quantum mechanics, information theory, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, chaos theory and complexity theory. Each of these encounters forces the reader to think anew, to imagine new possibilities for both philosophical and scientific thought. Each encounter also reveals the depth with which Bill Ross himself had thought about these matters.'

Reading Order and the Virtual, I am beyond the preface, but can see the point regards the depth of Bill Ross's reading of a broad range of philosophy and thought (which can be distinct).

The care die is rolled in the first sentence:

'Gilles Deleuze argued that the most significant characteristic 
of an encounter is that it forces us to think.'

When the encounter is clinical, complexity rains, and you really do need to think.

As the professions continue to find out. 

Finding and attending the workshop in September, Bill Ross's legacy and his book is a welcome coincidence as I write and prepare for April's conference. Much more to follow ...

Many thanks to Edinburgh University Press for my copy.

Bill Ross (2024) Order and the Virtual: The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-order-and-the-virtual.html

See also:
https://www.thebsp.org.uk/bill-ross-memorial-workshop-deleuzian-cosmologies/

https://technophany.philosophyandtechnology.network/article/view/24392

'Serres'

Laws of Form - Society, Conference, and Journal (to follow)

Finding out last minute at the end of last week, I attended the Laws of Form Conference at the Old Library, Liverpool University, 19 Abercromby Square L69 7ZN, UK. It was 17 minutes away by rail, so I made the short walk from Lime Street Station, as pre-existing commitments allowed.

The Society, devoted to the ideas and work of George Spencer-Brown is quite new 2023. I was greeted with a welcome that actively encourages the widest range of ideas as relates to LoF, the AGM also revealed future plans.

Laws of Form Books: Source lof50.com 

I've been on the LoF mail list for many years and every so often I've replied to themes that also touch thinking on Hodges' model. Now trying to look at Hodges' model more formally, learning of the conference I had to attend.

At the close today the vote of thanks expressed for the support of University of Liverpool and West DenHaag was shared here.

After the introduction, the first session by Andrew Crompton, of The Alternative Natural Philosophy Association, How to Make a Horse Vanish included insights into the scope of George Spencer-Brown's thought, combining philosophy, design, and architecture with great visuals. All the sessions were interesting, helpful and stimulating, including several that were technical detailing applications of Laws of Form:

".. Spencer-Brown has pointed out that he discovered an arithmetic that underlies Boolean algebra. This arithmetic is the Spencer-Brown Calculus of Indications generated by the mark <> (here written in typographical form) subject to the relations of calling, <><>=<>, and crossing, <<>> = , where, in crossing, the two marks are erased in the plane of writing. .." 
KEYNOTE Louis H Kauffman, Arithmetic in 'Laws of Form' - also Weds 7th Aug. 

Even though I could not understand the approach, listening to purposes, application and and the terminology is useful. 

I was online Thursday, and only followed the first two sessions. I have been exasperated with the various -isms, a response possibly shared with Jonathan Mize, Mind, Your Business: Reimagining business, art and science:

"The world is aching for a fresh approach to how we interact with one another. A popular prescription for our ailment is some type of new “ism,” some meticulously engineered set of dictums that propose to “fix society” once and for all. In this paper, I offer no “isms,” no grand new paradigms and no set of rules that humanity “must follow,” lest they slip into oblivion. What I offer is something very simple—a re-seeing of our approach to our everyday lives, a lifting of the vision from the “ills” and the “evils” of the world to the potential for our collective creation and experience. ..." Thurs 8th Aug.

Secondly, Diego Lucio Rapoport Campodonico, presented The Geometry and Topology of the Primal Distinction: Phenomenology and cosmo-sociomorphisms. If the public's understanding of science can be represented as a morphism, then it was extended here so I will explore.

There was a slide in the session of Florian Grote, Playing the Game of Counting to Two: On the question of requisite re-entries in communication including artificial intelligence (Friday 9th August), that I could immediately relate to Hodges' model:

"In the poem which provided the title for the book Only Two Can Play This Game, James Keys (1971) aka George Spencer-Brown provides the reader with a thorough reflection on the unlikely inevitability of a communicative – a social – world."

I can't cover all the examples of interest, but over the years systems, systems theory invariably crop up. Through the UKSS and Open University I have come across people with ties to the Schumacher Inst.. This thread continued 10th Aug, with Laws of Context with Philip Franses.

Hans Rudolf Straub's The Form and the Bit as Basic Building Blocks of Information: A comparison stood out as a source of reading conjoining LoF and informatics.

Marcus J. Carney's talk (also Sat 10th) Letting Go. The Form of Mourning reminded me of what does a single discipline mean when it uses the term 'applied'? Nursing a cold I didn't want to use the mic, but I think Marcus's work could support theory given the attention on trauma-informed care and therapy at present. There were obvious immediate connections in the abstract, borne out (well delivered!) in his presentation.

"Threnos in antiquity was understood as the activity of mourning. S. Freud dichotomised mourning with melancholia, entangling both in libido. A. and M. Mitscherlich took this up in the 1960s for the German people post Holocaust as their “inability to mourn”. J. Ruesen tried “Trauer” in this context again in the 1990s as “mourning humaneness”, bloating its abstraction. While M. Rothberg introduced the notion of “implicated subject” to the field/s of historical violence and injustices to modify R. Hilberg’s perpetrator-victim-bystander triad in 2019, the German “Historikerstreit 2.0” was raging, but not about Rothberg’s “implication”, yet about his 2009 concept of “multidirectional memory”, wherewith he demonstrated how the Holocaust had enabled the articulation of other histories of victimisation at the same time that it had been declared "unique" among human-perpetrated horrors, while uncovering the more surprising fact that public memory of the Holocaust emerged in part thanks to postwar events that seemingly had little to do with it."

As noted in a previous post, there's also the approach of Parallel Histories. You wonder from where dialogue can follow: Israel and Palestine ... but it must. On Wednesday the recent rioting impinged on proceedings with directions to close earlier and dining plans impacted. 

After too many years I must explore George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form and try to apply it to Hodges' model as an additional and alternative theoretical resource.

The GSB Society have a forthcoming journal which I will post about here as details follow.

The next conference is in 2026 and will be based in Cambridge - a great prospective source of ideas.

Conference 2023: Religious Experience and the Phenomenology of Nature

Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience

The Theme of the Conference

Faced as we are with climate change, mass extinctions of species, global pandemics, there is probably no more pressing theme today than that of nature. It is, however, not at all clear what we mean by ‘nature’, and whether discourse about nature is even meaningful today. Many speak of the ‘death of nature’ while at another extreme we find the exhortation toward a ‘re-enchantment’ of [by] nature. What the conference aims to explore is the place of religious experience within this our current situation.

Nature philosophy, including environmental ethics, but also the revival in Schellingian themes and the rediscovery within Phenomenology of the question of nature (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Husserl), questions any unidirectional subject/object relation to nature. Nature is that in which we find ourselves as human beings and despite our molding of our environments, according to such a view, the human engagement with the world itself embodies nature. The emphasis on embodiment shows not alone the limits of dualisms, but also the commonality of the human with the natural world in which we are and breathe. The inter-subjective experience of such being in nature and the inter-corporeal being with animals and plants around us is reflected in the sacramentality of religious observance from totemic rituals to the Christian Eucharist.

Inspired by the overcoming of dualisms of body and mind and nature and freedom deriving from the Phenomenology and Schelling, we can re-examine the religious sense of nature as containing sacredness. This religious sense can be understood metaphysically as an intuition of reality appearing as unapproachable. Phenomenologically, the question as to the source of this sense of the inapproachable and sacred can be understood in terms of feelings of awe (e.g., Otto). Not alone can nature be a source or locus of religious experience, but it may also be the case that religious affectivity gives us access to nature beyond the objectifying and instrumentalizing tendencies of Modernity. In this respect, we can think of the phenomenologies of life (Bergson, Tymieniecka, Henry), which explore modes of appearance of nature beyond the dualities of mechanism and vitalism. These accounts draw on – explicitly or implicitly – religious motifs such Christian notion of life as Christ, Vedantic life as Sat (Truth of Being, identical with self-consciousness and fullness), or Islamic God as truth or reality (al-Haqq), as well as other concepts across many traditions which are connecting life and nature. These motifs can be understood as compatible with the growing movement of panpsychism in the philosophy of mind (Strawson, Goff, Chalmers, Nagel) and the philosophy of life in biology (Varela, Maturana, Wilson).

Living through a pandemic it is important to hear [here?] attend to the core meaning of the word – pan demos, concerning all the people. Just as nature is everywhere, so any discourse about dwelling in nature (eco-logy) must be seen to concern the totality of human experience, in the sense of the full richness of its diversity. One manner in which such diverse experience can be understood is the way in which nature is experienced as a temporal phenomenon. This is clear already in the experience of the cyclicality of the seasons. It is also manifest in the current sense of ecological crisis which draws on a religious sensibility that has remained present in different guises through Modernity, namely the eschatological. In attempting to think nature with respect to religious experience, we are thinking within the intersection of temporal strands: mortal time, conscious time, cyclical, indefinite time, eternal, creative ‘time’. Understood eschatologically or messianically this relation is one in which ending is woven into the fabric of time: time as ending, transforming of past in the present and the opening up of a new future, time of forgiveness, repentance, grace and judgement (kairos)."

Details continued ...

Attending online, presentation to follow and suffice to say I'm out of my comfort zone - which is good.

I inquired at first whether introducing Hodges' model might be of interest, as ever, related to the conference's themes. To help establish my context, for the event organisers I attached the paper: "Exploring Serres’ Atlas: Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons". 

There was delay in my hearing more and acceptance being confirmed. I wish I could attend in-person, but am grateful for the opportunity - both to participate and be green. The paper's title is listed in the programme under: Anthropology and Informatics on the first day. Although the paper isn't the session, it fits well as a starting point. More to follow ...

SHAME AND MEDICINE PROJECT: 2022

‘PHENOMENOLOGY AND SHAME EXPERIENCES’

SPECIAL PANEL BSP ANNUAL UK CONFERENCE 2022

Call For Papers for special panel for the 2022 British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference

Location: University of Exeter, UK, in-person and virtual (hybrid)

Date: Tuesday 30 August – Thursday 1 September 2022

CFP deadline: Thursday 31 March 2022 (midnight UK).

The “Phenomenology and Shame Experiences” Call for Papers invites abstracts to be considered for a special panel for the 2022 British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference on the theme of Engaged Phenomenology II.

This panel is sponsored by the Shame and Medicine Project and the aim of the panel is to encourage an engaged phenomenological approach to considering shame in its various forms, and how it relates to and effects features of lived experience such as embodiment, affective life, consciousness, sociality, intersubjectivity, intercorporeality, health, among others.

Check out the full CfP for ‘Phenomenology and Shame Experiences’.

https://shameandmedicine.org/call-for-papers-phenomenology-and-shame-experiences/

 

Individual
|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------ mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

Group

COGNITION lived experience emotions mental health interpersonal skills self-conscious shame self-stigma subjectivity	physical health dis-ability place - privacy medicine health care HEALTH STATUS objectivity
STIGMA SHAME SOCIAL COGNITION communication meanings dignity and respect	health status [REAL?] power health professionals (whose parity of esteem, autonomy, control?) 'Cost' to health systems?

 

My source:

Philos-L "The Liverpool List" Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/

@PhilosL @LiverpoolPhilos

 

Psychopathology and the ‘Scaling Up’ Problem

This conference will focus upon the 'scaling up' problem in the context of psychopathology. More precisely, it will focus upon the extent to which phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are, or must be, 'representation hungry'. Whilst explicitly anti-cognitivist phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are present in the literature, very little work has been carried out on discerning the extent to which they require the positing of representation. This is somewhat surprising, because 'representation hungry' cognition (thought, imagery, hallucination) plays a prominent role in most psychopathologies.

During the conference, we aim to consider questions like: is it possible to provide non-representational accounts of psychopathology?; if so, is it desirable?; if not, does this damage the prospects of phenomenological and enactive explanations of psychopathology?; does the representational status (or lack thereof) of a given account have important ramifications for clinical theorising and practice?; and, more generally, is the concept “representation” helpful, harmful, or irrelevant to understanding psychopathology?.

In short, whilst anti-cognitivist accounts of psychopathology have been provided by phenomenologists and enactivists, very little has been said about the 'scaling up' problem with regards to them. The aim of the conference is to fill this gap.

The conference will be held via the Zoom platform on Monday the 5th, Tuesday the 6th, and Wednesday the 7th of October, from 15.00 to 17.30 CET.

Organization
Adrian Downey & Tobias Schlicht
Institute of Philosophy II
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Contact: a dot downey at sussex dot ac dot uk 

My source:

Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Recent posts can also be read in a Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL/ Follow the list on Twitter @PhilosL. Follow the Department of Philosophy @LiverpoolPhilos

Distinction: Phenomenal - Psychological and Scientific interpretations

"In order to separate different uses of quality dimensions it is important to introduce a distinction between a phenomenal (or psychological) and a scientific interpretation. The phenomenal interpretation concerns the cognitive structures (perceptions, memories, etc.) of humans or other organisms. The scientific interpretation, on the other hand, treats dimensions as a part of a scientific theory." Gärdenfors (2004).

SELF - individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group - POPULATION

Phenomenal (or psychological)	Scientific

Gärdenfors, P. (2014) Conceptual Spaces as a Framework for Knowledge Representation, Mind and Matter, Vol. 2(2), p. 14. 

Quantum existence and experience...

"Such a picture of man in the universe is clearly presented in the language of the Wintu Indians of California. Here the primary verbal stem refers to a world, a universe, that neither exists nor does not exist. We might say that it refers to the nature of things, a nature which is not realized because the things themselves do not exist, the situations have not come to be and may never come to be. Only at the instant when man experiences these do they come into existence, into history. The experiential or existential stem of the verb is derivative from this other stem. When man speaks with the aid of this stem, he asserts existence through his own experience of it. And it is only through his doing, through, probably, his decisive act or his act of will, that the world to which the primary stem refers can have concrete existence. This dialogue between the idea of the universe or the potential of the universe, and man's experience, runs through the entire linguistic structure." p.115.

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

Lee, D. (1961). Autonomous Motivation. In. Anthropology and education. Series: Martin G. Brumbaugh lectures in education., Series 5. Gruber, Frederick C. (Ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 103-123.

Empty Construction: A prelude to person-centred care

Book Review: Illness

Illness

As mentioned on W2tQ before this book has been feigning illness for over a year, sitting static on the bookshelf. Brushing it off has brought great reward that was quickly delivered as the book is just 160 pages plus references and index. My review copy is the revised edition from 2013.

The book is well structured with five chapters, that tread a consistent path through what is a very objective-subjective landscape. The author's aim and orientation is clear from the beginning. Each chapter provides a phenomenological account of how illness affects the life of individual. The shadow that is death is also an important thread throughout the book, culminating in the final chapter. Havi Carel describes the book as neither a personal story nor a purely philosophical reflection on illness. It is both, we are told (p.15).

The introduction lays out the disciplinary, experiential and perspectival divide that the book seeks to address, broadly normativist and naturalistic approaches to health and illness [presented using h2cm]. I say consistent above as you can see the personal story and philosophical aspects, but amid this 'illness' Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) a balanced gait between the personal account and philosophical dimensions is maintained. According to the text and Foundation: LAM is a progressive lung disease that usually strikes women during their childbearing years. The introduction and chapter 1 provides the narrative to the discovery of having LAM. This demonstrates the rather frequently haphazard, deferred, denial-oriented way in which people seek medical help. Given the apparent severity of the symptoms you might expect that help was sought sooner. I thought that was a male phenomena? This is one of several 'what ifs'... Havi expresses later.

Others reviews (yes I read one) remark on Carel's candidness and honesty. The book is courageous too, engaging the reader as an interviwer-interviewee; some questions are answered in the next paragraph, others left for the reader. Yet privacy, dignity and self-respect of the author foremost and people (family, friends, professionals) involved is preserved.

The philosophical discussion is not very technical, accessible it draws upon ancient Greek philosophers, notably Epicurus and the phenomenological school of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty. Further reading is listed and related to the book's themes. Critics of the book as Mikey Burley describes, see too many emotion-laden autobiographical anecdotes. The appeal for me of this book and the achievement of the author is to stress how the humanistic is still so frequently lost. The mechanistic stamps on communication, compassion, effective and person-centred care. Recourse to anecdotes is inevitable if we are to integrate an individual's experience and what the sciences can offer. Not just knowledge in all its forms, but seeking 'truth' - or its best approximation. Is the battle the individual Vs. the disciplines? Psychology is well established as a discipline and yet its early beginnings in Wundtian introspection were found wanting. We are still seeking balance.

The book is neither a treatise nor a tractatus, but it does seek to gain traction on meaning within health theory, practice. This is not armchair philosophy, it is everyday philosophy as might now be found in some pubs (public houses), it is trying to move towards philosophical therapy. Havi Carel addresses the way that health is taken for granted: we notice when there is a problem, functionality is curtailed. Contemplation of decline, mortality and death is not for the everyday, it is for the aged, Havi's students: Havi and many others who are touched by illness.

The body and mind feature large as would be expected, embodiment and agency. "We are our bodies; consciousness is not separate from the body" (p.16). What stands out for me is Havi Carel's call for a deeper conceptual shift since physiological accounts are insufficient to represent the personhood of illness. Actually, I know we keep saying 'deeper' but taken literally that might be reduction's way. The dichotomies here: objective-subjective, physical-mental health, internal-external (p.70), social model-medical model, self-other, health-disease and others ... seem to demand conceptual outreach. 'Meta' is everywhere these days, is this the case as Carel writes, with habit or pre-reflective: something for me to explore (p.27)?

Carel states what we know, but needs to be flagged. What does a walking stick represent, a zimmer frame, a wheelchair? In the same way that time can be compressed and extended so too can distance: it is not objective (p.16). As a former cross country runner that lesson was learnt quite a while ago, running diagonally across a ploughed field on a hill in February: oxygen debt. Once paid I recovered, but with a diagnosis like LAM and other rare diseases. I realise another definition of the individual-group axes within Hodges' model: a small group can become and act as one through activism.

Havi writes of mentally recording things, to remember abilities that will be lost, as adaptation and adjustment blur past and present. Experience of nursing people with dementia has prompted me to try to do this. Carel's hiking, swimming desire to push the envelope is universal. I can still remember the path running through Crompton's Woods, the trees, the turns the ups and downs. Reading Illness I recalled my brother vaulting over the back fence, we would land already halfway down the embankment the dust caught in the summer sun. We flew then. The woods for decades now a housing estate. Remember.

While reading was there was a coincidence in the media, the news of disease, cancer, life choices and bad luck (p.37). I suppose it is down to luck who deals with us a patient-client. I've always viewed an accepting, positive, open and caring attitude as fundamental for health and social care practitioners. Carel encounters care professionals who should be doing other things. Chapter two 'The social world of illness' begins with a single word: empathy. Regardless of ongoing austerity - Carel's story begins in 2004-2006 - empathy is the emotion in shortest supply. This really hurts. I am still trying to find a name for the professional who fails to be human, preoccupied with the mechanics of illness (p.47).

We have digital humanities and as noted in W2tQ medical sociology boasts an established literature. The medical humanities and philosophy of medicine are seeing to extend our understanding of health and illness (p.51). I am encouraged in the need for holistic views and approaches, conceptual and cultural frameworks (p.53). The counterpoint to unprofessional, negligent, disrespectful professionals is the need to learn to be rude, in order to cope generally (p.55). Some sentences are definitive. On well-being: "Well-being is the invisible context enabling us to pursue possibilities and engage in projects" (p.64). If I ever write another paper on information I will reference page 70, as I continue to reflect. Is technology, data - big and small and the quantified self the whole answer to healthcare's challenges?

Page 80 invites a philosophical discussion on personal identity, dementia and existence, to which we could also add sense-making and grief. The impact of illness is well made, as is the explanatory power of Heidegger. There is a mental exercise - imagining health within illness. I can extend this:

• Apply the concept of health to the domains of Hodges' model?
• Apply the concept of illness to the domains of Hodges' model?
• Apply the concept of health within illness to the domains of Hodges' model?

Page 81's focus on being, ability and dichotomies is very supportive of my studies. I'm not sure if the irony in mention of Stephen Hawking and a contracted horizon is intentional, but it made me smile. Page 87 reminded me of my hackneyed thoughts about cogeography - a cognitive geography of concepts for healthcare (and more); something beyond a classification system or nomenclature. An architecture that encompasses the dichotomies, disciplines and experiences mentioned above and in the book. Page 90's note of the apparent deficit perspective of medicine towards the lived body, might also emphasize the assumption of deficit in knowledge and the rise of the expert patient, student-centered learning also.

I have many more notes from chapters 4-5 and at least one more blog post to follow. Other questions arose from chapter 5. Will people be referred to mental health services in future because they are deemed suicidal as they decline their personalised genomic treatment (Kim Stanley Robinson's, Red Mars)? Chapter 5 Living in the Present had me thinking about Plato's Philosopher Kings (p.148). At the end of the day we must rule ourselves even in the darkest of circumstances, but this takes wisdom and philosophy. This is a much needed book and I have only scratched the surface. I will let you learn of the book's full title and the significance of the same. A great read, despite the subject.

BURLEY, M. (2011), EMOTION AND ANECDOTE IN PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENT: THE CASE OF HAVI CAREL'S ILLNESS. Metaphilosophy, 42: 33–48. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01675.x

Many thanks to Katharine Green, Editorial Assistant, Acumen Publishing for my copy.

Additional link:
BBC Radio 4: In Our Time, Phenomenology