Imagine a clear, starry night (probably outside of urban light pollution). The stars are randomly scattered.
But you can see areas of the sky whose stars you regard as a group, and thereby they “belong” together, and are called a constellation.
One oddly-bordered set of stars was called the “Andromeda” constellation by classical Greeks. Why such a jagged grouping?
Someone with lasting influence “saw” the goddess Andromeda spread-
ing her arms across that area of the heavens (here depicted at 90ª rotation). In honor of—in remembrance of, in validation of incompar-
able beauty—the “presence” of the goddess is certified by those stars which belong together, by god, in her name.
Without modern charting in classical Greek times, to find Andromeda in the heavens was no easy achievement. Those who could “see” her were special sensibilities, proven by demonstrable ability to indicate the constellation—to do the constellating—as the heavens rotated through the seasons.
At a very simplified level, ability to discriminate colors allows for finding the “3” here:
Andromeda is “there,” given that you map a certain posture of the discerning goddess into the heavens with proper perspective (angle).
logy”), not realistically modeling Our evolving. (Biology doesn’t evolve; it ecologically changes. Notions of biological progress are always relative to advancing intelligence accredited to biological intergenerationality. We map our interest in progressive design into a personified conception of “Nature” as intelligent design evolving.)
But like constellating stars results only from star-by-star gathering into the region of “found” belonging, so conceptual constellating results from topic-by-topic gathering of cohering prospects.
The constellation composes itself through its self-gestalting members, as the constellation gradually emerges, as if night Itself “neighbers the stars” through her presence (which Heidegger calls “the regioning of that which regions,” earlier in that Conversation).
Yet, the telic scale of fractalic cohering is concealed by merely relating, say, a model of recursive generativity in ordinary action with genera-
tivity of cultural understanding which (so claimed) is isomorphic. I would (will, do) argue that a recursiveness of telic cohering is better for progressive understanding than merely scaling non-dynamical isomorphisms (which is scientifically common).
Which star to point out first—which point to first star—depends on what interests us most—otherwise depending on my mood.
But to point somewhere first is not pretending to locate any origin. Even the origin of a life is an appellant gravity of its futurity.
Yet, point by point a very appealing constellation may be eventually found which is better than other conceptions available in contemporary philosophy (which, I realize, is a grand claim). I feel a long way to go, yet find awing gravity drawing me.
By the way, back to the star map: 11 o’clock from galaxy M31 (center in red) is the “star” named Andromeda. Before 1923, astronomy presumed that all the stars were all of the universe (being gradually defined by discovering more suns). There was no concept of a “mere” galaxy. Edwin Hubble proved a reality more consequential than the Copernican Revolution: that Earth is in one galaxy among countless others, including Andromeda, which is not a star.
Actually, the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in several billion years. Could it be that interstellar intelligences will have been constel-
lated for millions of years in each galaxy? In the Milky Way, are there already richly constellated intelligences waiting for Earthans to evolve to Contact competence?
My understanding of paleontology (re: how easily life forms, given identifiable basics), astrobiology (re: how easily common the basics likely are), and appreciation of our exponential evolving of techumanity (I call Us: recursiveness of evolving intelligence) causes me to confidently answer “yes.”
The epoch of Contact “Day” (as decades pass between Messages) will reveal that Earth has been Contacted by a constellated beauty beyond Our conceivability (so far), and It exists—the gods exist in concerted Singularity—for the sake of there being more intelligent life flourishing in “Our” galaxy.
