If the Sun is the Width of a Human Foot, How Big is the Moon?

“The sun is the width of a human foot.” ― Heraclitus ................... I adore Heraclitus, always have. Materialists have tried, often in vain, to reconcile all of his fragments into useable 'material' for their purposes. They often ridicule some of his statements while heralding others, sometimes even reaching the conclusion that he was not stable in his thinking, and that it was no wonder that he was a recluse. And in regard to phenomenological thinking, one vein runs long on Heraclitus, but it takes him in a different direction than would well align with Peirce. As with even today, we must always consider our sources when hearing, reading, and learning anything, in general ;-) . .. It's all about perspective, and the importance of remembering that 'perspective' is through the eye of the beholder. This is a hint into what Heraclitus also said about "The eyes are better witnesses than the ears." .. He was not trying to say that if your vision is bad, you have unreliable insight, and he was not trying to say that learning from others is unreliable. He was talking about attention and perception. .... It's helpful to consider this in the light of what Gregory Bateson was pointing to when he said, ”We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. … Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.” .... Heraclitus was talking about attention and representation. ..... All of this came to mind to me today upon reading something Merleau-Ponty wrote about attention. Please keep in mind that although I may not subscribe to everything Merleau-Ponty posits, he does offer much to consider in the light of Charles S. Peirce, and my dear old friend, Heraclitus. Merleau-Ponty wrote this... "When I look about freely, in the natural attitude, the parts of the field motivate this enormous moon on the horizon, this measureless size that is nevertheless a size." He goes on to insert how psychological and philosophical reflection factor into "a true theory of attention", but I see this from more of an analytical Phaneroscopic perspective. I always seem to be in that mental bumper car mode :) . So what does Peirce have to say about this? ... "A REPRESENTAMEN is a subject of a triadic relation TO a second, called its OBJECT, FOR a third, called its INTERPRETANT, this triadic relation being such that the REPRESENTAMEN determines its interpretant to stand in the same triadic relation to the same object for some interpretant." -CP Lowell Lectures, 1903. ... Notice how he emphasizes "TO a second". Thinking back on my blog post from yesterday, Secondness is the experience of relation to what is not. Per Peirce, "The idea of other, of not, becomes a very pivot of thought. To this element I give the name of Secondness." ... Heraclitus was bringing attention to the fact that the sun is clearly not a foot, and that this is a lesson in perspective and relation. At this point, how can one not imagine Heraclitus lying on his back in the grass on a lovely, sunny day, holding up his foot to the sun, and mentally drawing that triadic relation from his foot, to the sun, and then to his eye. ... What Merleau-Ponty also needs to do, is to hold his foot up to the moon. ... Now I am imagining the two of them together having that fascinating dialogue! Wouldn't THAT be something! Ha! :)