27 January

In our maths books, when we do trigonometry, are angles. What we don’t get taught is how angles were once the centre of all knowledge. An angle is a deviation. Trig lets us measure the size of the deviation, but it doesn’t tell us a thing about the deviation itself. Archimedes and others said deviation is the root of everything that exists. Archimedes saw that everything naturally deviates, that new forms and orders are always emerging, all by themselves. Order doesn’t have to be added to the world, by a God or anybody else, deviation (the new) is the default state of the world, in every moment. It even creates moments - time. The vortex is the angle in movement, a deviation that is moving forwards, deviating as it goes. Archimedes saw the vortex as the real ‘atomic’ source of everything. If you look around us, you’ll find vortices or spirals everywhere. Your body is spirally organised, you move spirally. The Earth is moving spirally through space. Great vortices on our weather maps every night. A social meme is a vortex, each person adds their own slight deviation to it, as it moves forward. Our lives ‘spiral out of control.’ Etc.