Why things are sometimes slightly different
“Different things are dependent upon different things.” Nāgārjuna
We’re keenly aware of differences, and sometimes oversensitive, at least when we think the differences matter to us. Sometimes we detect a difference we’re not even consciously aware of, but it still unconsciously affects our judgement and behaviour.
Having already explored why things are sometimes the same (https://link.medium.com/4GfWE9jdU8 – given in italics below), it’s time to consider why at other times they’re slightly different.
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[Things are sometimes the same because they’re just different views/ examples/ versions/ results of the same phenomenon/ idea/ method/ principle, but…]
I. You can approach the same thing in slightly different ways, and different views of the same thing may sometimes seem irreconcilable to varying degrees. Also, though they may both relate to exactly the same thing, sometimes we haven’t yet made the connection between particular instances of the same underlying structure/problem, like drawing pails of water from the same underground stream, without recognising that different river sections are actually the same watercourse.
- Different solutions to the same problem can be discovered simultaneously, such as the varying approaches to infinitesimals by Newton and Leibniz
- Chinese and European solutions to Equal Temperament were independently proposed about the same time, and though they were theoretically identical they differed slightly in the details of their practical implementation
- Morning and evening sightings of both Venus and Mercury are said to have been thought of as different objects until discovered to be the same two objects, as any sky-oriented person who can count and remember could figure out in a few months
- Amin Maalouf shows how different are the views of the invader and invaded in the contemporary accounts of the crusades as collected in The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1984)
[Things are sometimes the same because they independently come into being as a result of common local physical environmental conditions, but…]
II. Differences in the wider environment due to uneven distribution of resources and varied circumstances, and slight differences in boundary conditions, can all influence the outcome of a common physical process
- Amber (there are different types, including blue), oil (e.g. sweet and sour, depending on sulphur content), obsidian (which as well as black can be blue, red or yellow due to trace elements or inclusions), and crystals of lead (e.g. red litharge and black plattnerite), for example, have different characteristics depending on the circumstances of their formation, and since elements are distributed unevenly in the surface of the earth and have areas of higher and lower concentration
- Initial and boundary conditions vary in pipes, strings and stretched surfaces, giving rise to different but similar musical timbres and tones
- Volcanoes are more common in some localities, and consequently so is the incidence and use of volcanic materials such as obsidian
- When the environment changes slightly, so do the requirements for effective camouflage
[Things are sometimes the same because they independently express a shared human response in different cultures to the global human condition and environment (local innovation), but…]
IIIa. There can be a different individual and collective human response/reaction to the same initial conditions
- We may latch on to different details in the same common environment to try to achieve the same purpose (e.g. different calendars such as Venus-based Mayan, lunar-based Islamic or solar-based Roman calendars are centered on observations of different astronomical objects in order to measure time)
- Abstract visual art turned up in the shared Western fine art tradition around the same time in three different places, with slightly different results in each case (Malevich, Kandinsky, Braque), and almost simultaneously neotonal music emerged decisively but differently from shared classical norms (Schoenberg op.11, Scriabin op.58)
IIIb. and also prevailing local conditions/aesthetics can be exceptional
- We may latch on to different details specific to the local environment to try to achieve the same purpose (e.g. a palm leaf pattern as a basic decorative motif in Africa, versus the vine in Southern Europe or the oak in northern Europe)
- Pre-existing traditions predispose us to incorporate only certain features and not others, a principle of selectivity seen, for example in the way Vladimir Propp’s morphological method was received by two different “structuralist” schools of thought – in Prague, his theory of narrative structures found no response at all, while in Paris in the early sixties it was eagerly embraced
- In a culture where figurative representation in general is taboo, there will be no statues and figurines to represent motherhood and fertility – and then how would it be represented, e.g. symbolically in mathematics as geometrical patterns?
- ‘We find the crucial cosmographic detail that Dawn comes up from the waters of Ocean. The notion is not Mesopotamian, where the Sun comes up in the mountains. The persistence of this image as a set topos in Greek is seen half a millennium later in Theocritus 2.147 – 48, “Today, when the mares began to run toward heaven, bearing rosy-fingered Dawn from Ocean,”’ (Watkins, C., “The Golden Bowl, Thoughts on the New Sappho and its Asianic Background.” Classical Antiquity. Vol. 26, Issue 2, p.308)
- ‘Different climates and different bloods have different needs, different spontaneities, different reluctances, different ratios between different groups of impulse and unwillingness, different constructions of throat, and all these leave trace in the language, and leave it more ready and more unready for certain communications and registrations.’ (Pound, E., “ABC of Reading.” p.35)
[Things are sometimes the same because they become alike through contact with others (cultural diffusion),
a. when external factors change internal characteristics at some distance of time or place
b. when diverse external factors are mixed/embedded with internal characteristics in close proximity
c. when external factors are incorporated whole
but…]
IV. The contact itself and the effect of contact can be attenuated or modified
a. when increasing distance in time and place introduces more ‘noise’ to a ‘signal,’ and makes its interpretation more difficult
- In the game of Chinese Whispers, a sign varies slightly when transmitted from one player to the next, with humorous effect when a sequence of several players compounds enough errors or mischief to change the meaning entirely
- Creative people exercise artistic license to extend and adapt the work of predecessors, to learn from their circle and to be influenced by others, coming to resemble them, while seeking to make their own distictive mark, with cultures placing different relative value on originality or derivativeness
- ‘Even in those parts of Southeast Asia where an Indian religious framework is still very strong and where Buddhism has been a continuous source of cultural inspiration since the first millennium AD – particularly in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Burma – the fundamental Indian sources have become less distinct as local artists have increasingly exerted a more regional style on Indian-derived Buddhist elements, a regional style that shares much with other non-Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia’ (Maxwell, R., “Textiles of Southeast Asia: Trade, Tradition and Transformation”)
b. Things are sometimes destroyed/ repressed/ lost before their full influence can be felt
- Free society and admixture can be limited, through explicit segregation by any party, or other covert material or social barriers to integration and movement
c. Existing elements can be expelled, modified or remade
- A culture moves on or suffers an experience which alters society radically – e.g. WWI in Europe, the Great Depression, the global coronavirus crisis all disrupted and influenced cultural development in new directions
[Things are sometimes the same because they’re arbitrary but derived from a single common origin, but…]
V. Though from a shared source, things can subsequently develop slightly differently
- Systematic sound shifts occur in languages derived from shared roots, for example different modifications in each of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic from Proto Indo European (e.g. Grimm’s Law)
- Semantic development varies: knecht (boy) in German becomes a servant, but its cognate knight (boy) in English becomes a high ranking attendant
- ‘In its semantics and as the expression of a cultural theme the formula goods and chattels goes all the way back to Indo-European, even if the particular verbal expression, the wording of the phrase itself, does not. […] Renewal of one, two, or more members of a formulaic syntagma, of one or more signifiants, under semantic identity – preservation of the signifié – is a perfectly normal and commonplace way for formulaic sequences to change over time.’ (Watkins, C., “How to kill a dragon.” p.10, p.15)
- Tribes disperse and become isolated from their common source, while their languages, myths and cultures eventually take their own distinct course from the same beginnings
- Buddhism is Indo-European by origin, but is sinicised in Chan and Japonised in Zen, for example, before being reexported and westernised
[Things are sometimes the same because sometimes (and not always through any fault of our own) we can’t tell/ don’t notice/ ignore/ overlook the difference, but…]
VI. Sometimes we choose to care more, even unreasonably or irrationally, about differences which could otherwise go unremarked, and we become ‘splitters’ rather than ‘lumpers’
- Call it connoisseurship, pedantry or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but sometimes if things aren’t just so, it will not do at all
- We do physically hear individual harmonics, but most often perceive them as a gestalt in a composite timbre rather than individual pitches
- Plato and Confucius both emphasise the moral effects of music, but we can draw out contrasts between their moral interpretations
- We can look more closely at something we’ve only considered on a larger scale, and notice small differences in detail within broad similarity
[Things are sometimes the same because we consciously create or accept analogies between unrelated and independent forms which seem similar to us, but…]
VII. Consciously examining the wider effect of conscious analogies can lead to a more refined awareness and differentiation
- Unpacking conscious analogies by extending them so far into complex conceit that they add playfulness to their power of persuasion (John Donne and George Herbert, I’m looking at you), though Samuel Johnson complains in Lives of the Poets (1779) that in metaphysical poetry ‘The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together’
- The judges in the poetry match at the residence of Chamberlain Tadamichi in the second of the tenth month of 1118 call out the competing poets for contradictory, inappropriate and irrelevant poetic analogies (in Shirane, H. (ed.), “Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600” p.600)
[Things are sometimes the same because we unconsciously create or accept analogies between unrelated and independent forms which seem similar to us, but…]
VIII. Sometimes we resist certain analogies which are well founded but threaten our world view
- We often repress unpleasant thoughts, memories and associations we find disturbing, leaving their differences unresolved
- Freud’s own lifelong resistance to the analogy of ‘machine man,’ demonstrated every time he explained away or overlooked evidence of man’s machinehood, led to a whole chain of different theoretical avoidances of the same fundamental truth
[Things sometimes seem the same because they do the same thing in a different way, but…]
IX. Sometimes means are more important than ends, focusing on causes and processes rather than effects
- When it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it that is significant
- Intent and premeditation are distinguishing preconditions for first degree murder
- Industrial manufacture can be sustainable, or not, to different degrees
- Supply chains can be ethical, or not, to different degrees
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Now I’ve set out the framework for why things are sometimes the same, and sometimes slightly different, perhaps I can leave you to work out for yourself how a few examples play out across the classification, remembering that there may be more than one reason in each case:
- In some languages the word for moon is related to white (e.g. Irish gealach ‘moon’, also ‘brightness’, from geal ‘bright, white’), and in other languages moon is related to month (e.g. in English from PIE *mēnses), illustrating two common naming motivations in different languages, the first arising from a shared characteristic, the second arising from use of the moon to define a period of time
- ‘While archaeologists generally end this prehistoric period [in Thailand] at the time of Christ when the region became subject to the growing influences of India and China, some of the textile materials and techniques used during the prehistoric period have survived in the region into recent times.’ (Maxwell, ibid.)
- ‘An aircraft need not be equipped with feathers or have its engines in its chest’ (Atkins, P., “Galileo’s Finger.” 2003, p.360)
- In a news article about US President Donald Trump: ‘even if he’s not an agent of Putin, he might as well be’
- What happens to a river of fresh water running into the sea, and what happens to a cup of salt added to water?
- How do you account for different traditions of medicine?
- How do you account for different traditions of morality?
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No differently from the way in which this essay was trailed in its earlier companion essay on Why Things are Sometimes the Same, I’m now going to trail the following works in progress, again more by way of self-encouragement than to advertise: Why Things (and Our Ideas About Them) Sometimes Change while Others Remain the Same (touching on ideas of natural propensity to change, evolutionary pressure, fitness, utility); and Why Things Sometimes Change in the Same Way, and Other Times in Ways that Change (though for now, I’m not really sure where that will lead).
Meanwhile, because that may take some time (it took nearly two years to get from that earlier essay to this), in case you hadn’t noticed I’m often editing and adding to the collected examples, so please do check in occasionally for any small changes I may make for any reason, including the above …
