Shape

73 A First Look at Calculating
so that the long line that contains a half is erased when the half is, then I get the visual
results I’m looking for. I started with a single rule to erase a line, and now I have three
rules that have to be applied judiciously. Who would ever think that triangles could
cause so much trouble? Imagine the difficulties for harder shapes. But so what? Problems
are there to solve any way you can. That’s what reason is for. Evans’s grammar is
fixed—it’s permanent and permanently repaired—even if my two new rules are ad hoc.
Only there’s more to worry about. How does this square with statement 1 above,
and what it implies? Seeing may be confused in other ways as well, when it comes to
calculating in Evans’s grammar. Many parts that are easy for me to see—there are no
tricks; you can see the same parts yourself—are impossible for rules to find. Take the
triaxial motif
with equilateral arms. I can define the Y in the rule
Three lines fi Y
The Y appears indefinitely many times
yet the rule—or any other rule for that matter—can’t find it, not even once. And it’s
easy to check that this is correct. It’s calculating, but it isn’t seeing. What’s gone
wrong? All of a sudden, Evans’s grammar is blind. Is there always something that’s going
to be missed when I calculate? It’s not because I can’t define precisely what I want
to find. I can do that for any shape (part) I like. Maybe I should try the rule
Three lines fi WHY
Why can’t I see Y? (Words that sound alike can be different, just not in Evans’s way.)
It’s part of sensible experience, and it’s almost everywhere I look. What’s going on with
shapes and rules?
In Evans’s shape, there are too many constituents for triangles, and not enough
of them for even a single Y. One or two line segments can be found in a number of
places here and there