[D66] 'List van de lijst'

[A.O.]

Volgens Hegel is er de 'list van de rede' die het goddelijke plan 
actualiseert (cunning of reason) maar is er ook een 'list van de lijst'?

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Umberto Eco on lists

     The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art 
and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. 
It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a 
human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the 
incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections 
in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an 
allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 
2,063, at least according to Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We 
also have completely practical lists -- the shopping list, the will, the 
menu -- that are also cultural achievements in their own right.

     ...At first, we think that a list is primitive and typical of very 
early cultures, which had no exact concept of the universe and were 
therefore limited to listing the characteristics they could name. But, 
in cultural history, the list has prevailed over and over again. It is 
by no means merely an expression of primitive cultures. A very clear 
image of the universe existed in the Middle Ages, and there were lists. 
A new worldview based on astronomy predominated in the Renaissance and 
the Baroque era. And there were lists. And the list is certainly 
prevalent in the postmodern age. It has an irresistible magic.

     ...We like lists because we don't want to die.


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The list is a potent information processing tool - think about 
artificial intelligence oriented computer language LISP (name derives 
from List Processing).

I suppose that what Eco is driving at is that a written list is probably 
the original concrete realization of "memory." A narrative or a story 
can be conceived as a list of events. What you write is a fragment of 
memory that has a chance of surviving you.


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L=T