of Maxwell Clark
"[...]it could be discovered that they did not
act from knowledge, but solely from
the disposition of their organs[...]"
---Descartes,
Discourse on Method
Research: the proper
grammatical case of "infinity"; if it even has one? On the
confirmation of this case follows that of its neologistic conjugation (or
cognate? both?)---"infinitism". Upon these two present lexical
wonderments being most rigorously affirmed into their most determinate and
proper cases of grammar, almost undoubtedly more must follow, however utterly
unforeseeable these so fated revelations remain of yet. But, then, how does
grammatical classification, especially one such as that just augured in the
sentences previous to this, affect the conditions of our social life? as
creation or infinity itself? (May yet infinity ever be properly, that is, grammatically predicated as of
"itself" however? Or, isn't infinity never even once itself? as always
otherwise transcending its once said conceptualizations, or absolutely
restless?) Identifying grammatical cases, or, for this peculiar inquiry, alone
those of the "terms" (this term, however, itself already also a
highly suspect or inapropos term, because also terminating, or terminal, et.
al, in its cognate connotations, and so thus also conflating its said concrete
contextual references---e.g. "infinity",
"infinitism"---into its own finite structure or closed set of
valences) infinity and infinitism, if this hypothetical task ever prove
achievable in even the most minimal sense, such as grouping each said
"term" (as it were) into or under the most common and authoritative,
or persuasive, categories of grammatical orthodoxy, much less witnessing how
they affect some momentous shift or renovation in our grammatical schemata---as
is perhaps ever the most dire want and will of "infinity" and
"infinitism" in their relations with grammar.... Or, indeed, the
remodeling of grammar, as is especially obvious when faced with this placing of
"infinity" and "infinitism" into its traditional
categories/cases, is its own interminable task for itself, or, perhaps more
rigorously put, its own infinite desire (to become otherwise). As infinity, if
not also infinitism (it depends on actualizing their grammatical cases), is interminable, then, perhaps the
corollary of this is that neither, or at least the former, is not a term, as such, anymore, or in any
hereafter sincere or rigorous expression let us say. This essential interminability
of infinity and infinitism, or, that is, their common exclusion from the
generality or referential provenance of terminology, or their non-existence as
terms, otherwise put as their being transcendentally elsewise and exterior
to/from the entiremost set of significant valences radiating out from each of
the cognates, et. al, of the "infinitive" verb (traditional
grammatical center or inaugural essence of any term's later, or subsidiary,
grammatical conjugations) "to term". An aside on the said (if very
hesitantly so "said") infinitive
class of the verb-form "to term": how is its characteristic activity as a verb, e.g., in terming,
terminating, rendering terminal, setting terms to, bringing to term, et. al,
also said to be "infinitive" as such. As such, that is, as "to
term" (however grammatically classed as an infinitive) is also nearly
synonymous with finition, e.g., making finite, or production of
finitudes---each of these determinations being, as is almost needless to
further note, of among the most precisely and unequivocally obverse, and so
somewhat also meaningless, possible relations to the name of infinity, and thus
too, perhaps, also the infinitive (its cognate?). If infinity is never a term,
then, how is the verb-form "to term" infinitive, except as an
abberant corruption of the name of infinity, its non-terminological
significance; as if its conjugation into a very minorly different lexical form
(as though, perhaps, through the substitution of a distinct postfix:
"-ive" for "-y") very majorly twisted its meaning into an
antithetically contorted shape. Nowhere else in my almost agnostic ignorance of
grammatical studies does any change of postfixes to an otherwise common or
"root" participle affect anything near the total reversal of signifying
valences which is witnessed in the permutation of infinity unto infinitive, or
vice versa (if only insofar as the lattermost cognate is the
verb-classification of the said term: "to term"). Veering away a
little from this as yet (perhaps forever) unresolved enigma of said extreme
polarization in the meaningful senses of two otherwise exceedingly cognate
signs (if you will), however supremely bewildered its exposition, I stumble
untowardly to the seemingly proximate set of issues concerning what is the infinitive
form of the non-terminological name of infinity? i.e., is there a
grammatological "center" or "inaugural essence" unto which
the name of infinity may be conjugated back into? is infinity, as such,
grammatological? ....
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