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The UPEI SUN’, Thur

‘BY SAM KOUNOS-U

This is a typical physicist’s talk on Love. If you expect 2; nice and sheet love, you will be disappointed. Catastrophe is something like disaster and most. people would probably prefer not to see their love affairs or prospec- tive ones in such a metaphor.

On the other hand, popular expressions iike “fall in love“ do‘carry some sense of sud- den catastrophe. One might be swept away by an uncontrollable flow of energy or con~ sumed in the flame of an affair. What is more, I sense that people have some suspi— cion or awareness that Death is somehow linked with erotic excitement. Love is like a flower, sweet and beautiful. but we know it

is ephemeral. And, perhaps our awareness,‘ though suppressed by our finite being makes us appreciate beauty in ephemeral :‘phenomena. If sojcatastrophe is not entirely " an impossible metaphor to try.

H Besides, I happened to see Reds and was ivery much impressed by the bed scene in .which a larger than life size silhouette towered up in the rhythm of the Interna- tional. Indeed, it was a climax, an up-welling A of resonant energy, awakened suddenly after long years of suppression and suffering, ‘blundering andhumiliation. In the scene, I saw a Freudian message; “frustrated and alienated men and 'Women of the world, unite!" _

Obviously, this is,.a bourgeois interpretation. But the temptation was too great to resist trying the metaphor. And if I continue the bourgeois view, I would even dare to comment that what happened in SOCtober, 1917 was not a revolUtion in power, but in 'love. The ideals ofequality and liberty were there, but ,it was primarily an up—rising of fraternity, solidarity. the Soviet in the sense of the Union, comradeship, 'communion of love.

Ofcourse. too good a thing couldhot last too long. f" i

What goes up must eventually come down, as com- mon sense physics would say. Freud thought that humans are not capable ofsustaining such a tremen— Tdous gushing of energy, however desirable it is. Ac- cording to MarCuse, in Eros and Civilization, Freud contended that the full liberation of love is too much

'fOr finite beings likehumans. The “reality princi- "

zple,"-—which is the contrived necessity of work in an

economy inflated by civilized , wants, and the 7 “performance principle” of» .Mar’Cuse, which says

.“people have to do something to stay away from love ‘ Uplay"——conspire to keep control on love.

William james talked about economic competition as a “moral equivalent of war.“ Thus, in the Freudian fear of love, one ‘ might talk' of War as a “moral equivalent of love."*And I observe that in the guise of fighting, humans practice Inving. Comradeship in front lines, nationalism, patriotism, etc., would not be permitted if they were openly admitted to be disguised forms of love. And, in the same line of thought, one might go on to say that hate and violence are used to disguise love. The opposite of love is not hate. not violence, but indifference, loss of relation, loss of meaning. The popular expression “meaningful relationship" conveys a good sense of love.

I think, it would be better to imagine two (or multi- ple) dimensions in the linguistic space for the talk— thinking of love and related affairs. Love and violence do not map well onto a one dimensional metaphor like a line, though behavioral psychologists often use theﬂone-dimensional metaphorical representation. Freud (and Marx, Weber, et al) was not quite a “one dimensional thinker,“ but his rhetoric seems to fall in—

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to the linear metaphor in dealing with dialectical op—g

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To me it is unfortunate. The dialectical opposites are better taken as two different dimensions so that they can both be at the heighttof intensity at the same 7 time. And it is somewhat disappointing that Marcuse, for that matter,’was not clear, despite writings like Ortiz-Dimensional Man in which he did talk of the geometry of Husserl, etc. I wonder/if it is due to the structure of European languages‘and hence European thinking. The encircling image-symbol of-Yin-Yang in Zen is at least two-dimensional. and it is presumably a picture of moving relations._ In that sense, the“Zen symbol resembles Poincarc’s limit cir—' cle traced in a phase space diagram, and it is appealing as an image of dialectics.

There is an irony here. I’oincare‘s limit circle ap- peared in studies of Newtonian mechanics. Newto— nian mechanics are, in my estimate, the essence of the , European mentality, the crowning achievement of the western intelligence. Yet Poincare proved that Newtonian mechanics is not deterministic in the naive sense that Laplace boasted—though many scientists even today appear to believe in the determinism of Newtonian mechanics. The topological rhetoric Poin- care started is now coming into physics, gradually replacing the analytical rhetoric, as if physics is enter— ing the mind space of Oriental metaphysics.

' The Catastrophe theory is an extension of Poin-

care’s idea, carried out by R. Thom et al. Thorn ' published Structual Stability and Morphogenesis...ii

(1972) in which he discussed not only mathematics and biology but also sex, language, and even cogito. A short summary of the catastrOphe theory appeared

- in Scientific American, April 1976 (by E.C. Zeernan).

I shall use the illustration of the catastrophetheory in Zeeman’s article to build a theory of love. Then i shall come back to Freud's problem of free love.

In his article in the Scientific American, Zeeman us- ed an illustration of catastrophe giving a beautiful pic- ture of three dimensional linguistic space. The. three diipensions are designated as fear, anger. and behaviour. However, since the theory is topological;

tion. Something like...“w0uld donicely." The‘theory is invariable, though open to the liberai exercise of poetic license. This is the beauty-and the strength of topological; theory. .And, although the illustration is given for,“aggression ofa‘dog” it need not be limited

to that particular interpretation. The strucrure or

“form” Can be applied to many cases, as the accompa- nying diagram illustrates. Incidentially,_ what behaviorists are doing appears to. 'me ' to be topological. Perhaps, they are poets at heart, but their religion does not let them admit their poetic quality.

In the linguistic space, there is a folded surface. The folded part is a double (or triple) valued function «of the two parameters, the fear and anger. in this region, the dog’s behavior jumps from one layer'jo another of the surface. The jump is sudden, andpresumably un- predictable (this unpredictability is-not actually incor- porated in the simple illustration model, but ibis understood in the theory). And the "jump is: the catastrophe. The behavior is traced. around the folded part of the surface by the dynamics and: makes up a limit circle; (vicious .cyclei—J. shallemit talking of equations: of motion ‘here. The illustration sto‘r‘v4does make sense. I recoinmend you read the story.

One can use E‘he same diagram to represent “prey-predator" dynamics. Then the catastrophic jumps correspond to "catch" or “eating” for one. and the other is, interestingly, referred to by Thomas sogitm. ‘

Following the lirhit circle (vicious cycle) Thom narv, rates story. The “predator” after eating become “prey,” or “prey-likef‘ The ‘.‘,prey" is rathett-a self— centered iegoist. It is only concerned ,with-~_.itsel_f,

. though "theif‘fpii’éyw is the, ftgiver23‘1»."fhen~<theintotion ' (change-Inf ’statejé'comes to,ar‘gtastrophe,ﬁrmllegsé“ cogito; The “prey-like” realizes that it is htingry;~

becomes a_“predat‘or” and starts looking for19‘iprey.” The “predator” however, is an “other—centered”. be- ing; Its main concern is not him/ her-self. Itclcould be said to be .“aggressive” but not “sefﬁ-sh’i_ or

“narcissisticﬁ'And the “predator” is the one who ac- ~

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