PATAPHYSICS-THE-POETICS-OF-AN-IMAGINARY- SCIENCE_C_Bok

Pound, such a swerve is the atomic glitch of a microcosmic
incertitude--the symbol for a vital poetic, gone awry.
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Lucretius writes that, "while the first bodies are
being carried downwards by their own weight in a straight
line through the void[ ...], they swerve a little from their
course" ( 113 ) , for without this uncertain swerve in space
and time (incerto tempore ferme incertisuue locis), "al1
would fa11 downwards like raindrops through the profound
void, no collision would take place[...]: thus nature would
never have produced anything" (113).
The clinamen involves
a brownian kinetics, whose decline defies inertia since such
a swerve must imply a change in vector without a change in
force. The clinamen represents the minimal obliquity within
a laminar trajectory.
The curve is a tangent to a descent,
but a tangent that defies al1 calculus since the curve is
itself a tangent composed of nothing but tangents ad
inf initum:
the volute rhythm of a fractai contour.
Lucretius resorts to such a swerve in order to posit a
choice between what Serres regards as two genres of physics:
"Venus, that is to say, nature; or Mars, that is to sey,
nature" (1982:98).
Venus denotes the eroticism of a nomad
paralogy, the volu~tas of a fluid dynamics (fold and flow),
whereas Mars denotes the necrotism of a royal paradigm, the