The Being of Analogy

Abstract

The world is due for a resurgence of original speculative metaphysics. The New Metaphysics series aims to provide a safe house for such thinking amidst the demoralizing caution and prudence of professional academic philosophy. We do not aim to bridge the analyticcontinental divide, since we are equally impatient with nail-filing analytic critique and the continental reverence for dusty textual monuments. We favor instead the spirit of the intellectual gambler, and wish to discover and promote authors who meet this description. Like an emergent recording company, what we seek are traces of a new metaphysical 'sound' from any nation of the world. The editors are open to translations of neglected metaphysical classics, and will consider secondary works of especial force and daring. But our main interest is to stimulate the birth of disturbing masterpieces of twenty-first century philosophy. Noah Roderick The Being of AnalogyLondon 2016 OPEN HUMANITIES PRESSOpen Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide. OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2016Freely available online at http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/the-being-of-analogy AcknowledgementsThe more you understand your debts to others, the harder it is to articulate them. With that terrible paradox in mind, I want to thank Charish. Above all. All of my love. And finally, this book would not have been possible had GrahamHarman not taken a chance on me. I thank him for the revolutionary ideas he brought to the world, for the comma he brought to page 137 of my manuscript, and for everything in between. List of Figures Introduction The Midday StarsEinstein's great mystique lies in his intellectually humble beginnings and in his unorthodox thinking. Every eighth grade science student has heard about his inability to speak until the age of four (though this is almost certainly untrue). They know about how his most important ideas were developed while he was a frustrated patent office worker, and about how he dreamt up his theory of relativity while watching trains pass each other.Einstein's exuberance, his funky hair, and his ability to translate startling visuals into beautiful mathematics made him a counter-culture hero. All of it seemed to come naturally to Einstein, a quirk of personality. Not so for Hideki Yukawa. He titled his memoir Tabibito, "The Traveler." Yet, it is full of mentions of his distaste for leaving the sanctuary of his home and routine.The book's subtitle might well have been An Unexpected Journey. Yukawa had to work hard to become an unorthodox thinker. Since it was not part of his personality, it had to become his philosophy.In the years following the Russo-Japanese War, in the spirit of Meiji curiosity about the nation's rivals, Russian literature was all the rage in Japan. Because of his crippling shyness and his lack of interest in all of the things boys at the time w...