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On Being Scaled The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of English ON BEING SCALED RHETORICAL PRACTICES OF THE COSMOS A Dissertation by Joshua Michael DiCaglio © 2016 Joshua DiCaglio Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2016 The dissertation of Joshua DiCaglio was approved* by the following Richard Doyle Liberal Arts Research Professor of English Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Jeffrey Nealon Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Philosophy John Jasso Assistant Professor of English Mark Morrison Professor of English Head of the English Department Mark Shriver Professor of Anthropology Debra Hawhee Director of Graduate Studies, English Department *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT This project explores scale as technology of attention, a means of attending to one’s own perceptual field, systematically applying a measure to consistently compare the relative appearance of things. Scale is a phenomenological apparatus that permits us to speak of atoms, cells, bodies, planets, galaxies, and the whole cosmos in relation to each other. Scale is likewise a notation, a reference point whereby we relate one object (a galaxy) to our normal perceptual field (a meter). As a notation, scale’s significant rhetorical power manifests in its capacity to transform our understanding of our usual experience: in the capacity to conceive of this world, this body, and oneself according to these different scales. I explore scale through the scalar practices of both science and mysticism, with occasional reference to political conceptions of scale. The project finds that mysticism, the perennial aspects of spirituality that aims for union with a higher being, is an unavoidable and essential part of understanding scale since scalar terminologies tend to arise from mystical experience and encountering scale tends to generate decidedly mystical questions. Looking at mysticism in relation to science permits a fresh exploration of why science finds itself struggling with mystical concepts, such as wholeness, vastness, transcendence, hierarchy, or infinity, which are particularly notable within astronomy and ecology. Likewise, looking at how science develops and systematizes scalar descriptions permits a reworking of these mystical concepts in a manner that retains a clearer reference to empirical practices, while not remaining strictly within a material conception of the cosmos. The question of scale leads this project to move between conversations in both the humanities and the sciences through their common expression in various encounters with scale. Each chapter begins with a consideration of a higher scale encounter born from space race iii rhetoric, science fiction, astronomy, or ecology in order to introduce a contemporary instantiation of scalar encounters. Among these cultural icons are Stewart Brand’s vision of the Whole Earth, Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s transcendental experience in space, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s encounter with a vast informatic entity, and Carl Sagan’s account of the Cosmos as the All. These contemporary icons are likewise mixed, via the common interest and encounter with scale, with close examinations of philosophy and mystical texts from Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Christian mysticism, Martin Heidegger, Vedanta, Buddhism and the Upanishads, as well as more contemporary spiritual and literary accounts from Walt Whitman, Richard Maurice Bucke, Aldous Huxley, among others. Science, of course, is not neglected: work from neuroscience, quantum physics, Gaia theory, mathematical logic, cybernetics, and ecology are likewise woven together around particular scalar concerns. This widespread examination is focused through the introduction of three phenomenological origins of scale— distance, measuring, and the determination of scope—each leading to a reworking of what scale is and how it functions, with widespread implications for how we speak of scalar structures and relations. Each of these phenomenological origins leads to additional reconsiderations of classic scalar concepts: wholeness and division; conversion and reflection; and the Otherworldly or transcendent. iv Table of Contents List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................... viii Introduction: On Scaling Being ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: Scaling the Whole Earth ............................................................................................................... 36 Demanding the Whole Earth .................................................................................................................. 36 Mystical Scales ............................................................................................................................................ 41 Up the Mountain ....................................................................................................................................... 46 The Overview, the Claim, and the Airplane ......................................................................................... 49 Dreams of Transcendence ....................................................................................................................... 56 Behold the Earth ....................................................................................................................................... 66 The Globe Unmapped .............................................................................................................................. 70 Scaling Beyond Metaphor ........................................................................................................................ 76 Querying Cosmic Consciousness ............................................................................................................ 83 Scaling Methodus ....................................................................................................................................... 89 Chapter II: Wholeness before Fragmentation .............................................................................................. 94 Dissecting Wholeness ............................................................................................................................... 94 Zeno’s Trap .............................................................................................................................................. 106 Continuum Gestalt .................................................................................................................................. 116 Going Crazy with VALIS ....................................................................................................................... 124 Your Objects are already Ubik .............................................................................................................. 134 The Divine Injection of Palmer Eldritch ............................................................................................ 150 The Death of Fragmentation ................................................................................................................. 160 Chapter III: The Eyes of the Cosmos .......................................................................................................... 164 Vision beyond the Earth ........................................................................................................................ 164 Scale and Measure.................................................................................................................................... 168 Gazing into Nature .................................................................................................................................. 175 Examining the Mind’s Eye ..................................................................................................................... 193 Vision’s Privilege...................................................................................................................................... 212 Vision of God Tricks .............................................................................................................................. 224 Eyeing the Involution ............................................................................................................................. 244 Chapter IV: The Turning To ......................................................................................................................... 254 v Attending to Oneself .............................................................................................................................. 254 Turning Around ....................................................................................................................................... 259 Bateson’s Loop ........................................................................................................................................ 276 Nomologies of Conversion.................................................................................................................... 285 Inoculating the Divine ...........................................................................................................................
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