'Pataphysics: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|''"If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know."''|'''Marvin Minsky''', American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI laboratory}}

 

<big>′Pataphysics resists definition<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Pataphysics</ref>, giving it hundreds of them. Here are some more.</big>

'Pataphysics (French: 'pataphysique) is an absurdist, pseudo-scientific literary trope. ′Pataphysics is to metaphysics as metaphysics is to physics. ′Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. ′Pataphysics describes the hypothetical that comes from the imaginary. ′Pataphysics sometimes finds useful from the useless. ′Pataphysics is tongue-in-cheek rules taken seriously, but not too much. ′Pataphysics has become a joke of applied pseudoscience in that it has been seriously done<ref>http://pata.fania.eu/</ref>. ′Pataphysics on rare occasions is how the world ought to be and points out [[Reality Is Unrealistic]].

 

 

It is important to avoid misunderstanding to understand that '''’pataphysics is not postmodernism!''' The two philosophies are fundamentally incompatable, in fact<ref>http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/pataphysics-is-dead-serious/</ref>. Postmodernism proposes that reality is a fiction or that there is no difference between literal and metaphorial truth. ′Pataphysics proposes that there is a reality and that it is not the same as metaphorical realities, which themselves are distinct constructs. Indeed, the construction of metaphorical realities is taken from metaphysics and their study and in depth exploration is a core part of ′pataphysics. ′Pataphysics recognizes these metaphorical realities as just that, imaginary. ′Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions after all. It might even be argued that ’pataphysics is the exact opposite of postmodernism for all this.

 

In terms of tropes, ′pataphysics might be the greatest one of all, with all tropes being examples of it as the rules of [[Theory of Narrative Causality|narrative causalities]] called stories. The [[Troper|troper]] is the pataphysician of these pataphorical worlds. Our [[Anthropomorphic Personification|metaphors run amok]] become pataphors, and our pataphors subject to our tropes. In these worlds the [[Genre Savvy]] are the physicists, and everything around them is the result of some person asking "what would it be like if [[All Theories Are True]]?" Or maybe it's just [[Artistic License Physics]] for worlds based on [[Rule of Cool]], [[Just for Fun]].

 

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== Architecture ==

* Neil Spiller has pursued the pataphysical aspects of architecture

* Musée Patamécanique is a private museum located in Bristol, Rhode Island. Founded in 2006, it is open by appointment only to friends, colleagues, and occasionally to outside observers. The museum is presented as a hybrid between an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities and contains works representing the field of Patamechanics, an artistic practice and area of study chiefly inspired by Pataphysics. Examples of exhibits include a troupe of singing animatronic Chipmunks, A Time Machine, which the museum claims to be the world’s largest automated Phenakistoscope, an olfactory Clock, a chandelier of singing animatronic nightingales, an Undigestulator (a device that purportedly reconstitutes digested foods), A Peanuts Enlarger, A Syzygistic Oracle, The Earolin (a 24 inch tall holographic ear that plays the violin), and a machine for capturing the dreams of bumble bees

 

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