TY - JOUR

T1 - Etcetera

T2 - scale and indifference

AU - Aquilina, Aaron

PY - 2019/7/1

Y1 - 2019/7/1

N2 - Starting from a NASA infographic which inadvertently highlights how we often understand cosmic objects solely in comparison to Earth and its occupants, this essay foregrounds the idea of human insignificance as one often associated with thoughts about the scale of the universe. Indeed, when looking up, scale seems to go on forever: planet, solar system, galaxy, and on eternally, etcetera. In order to examine this issue, the present argument takes the seemingly oblique route of looking at poetry, specifically Don Paterson’s ‘Scale of Intensity’, so as to expound three issues: (i) whether ‘scale’ and its hierarchies are best understood epistemologically or ontologically; (ii) how certain literary and philosophical works (particularly in terms of nihilism and eliminative ontologies) address the conjoint problems of scale and insignificance, this mostly through a rumination of the philosophical term ‘sub specie aeternitatis’; (iii) and, finally, whether feelings of insignificance necessarily entail ones of indifference. In its concluding movement, this essay looks to Sextus Empiricus’s particular reading of indifference, ultimately turning also to Albert Camus’s ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, which is here understood as offering a rejoinder to the seemingly incommensurable arguments on whether the human race ultimately matters, or not.

AB - Starting from a NASA infographic which inadvertently highlights how we often understand cosmic objects solely in comparison to Earth and its occupants, this essay foregrounds the idea of human insignificance as one often associated with thoughts about the scale of the universe. Indeed, when looking up, scale seems to go on forever: planet, solar system, galaxy, and on eternally, etcetera. In order to examine this issue, the present argument takes the seemingly oblique route of looking at poetry, specifically Don Paterson’s ‘Scale of Intensity’, so as to expound three issues: (i) whether ‘scale’ and its hierarchies are best understood epistemologically or ontologically; (ii) how certain literary and philosophical works (particularly in terms of nihilism and eliminative ontologies) address the conjoint problems of scale and insignificance, this mostly through a rumination of the philosophical term ‘sub specie aeternitatis’; (iii) and, finally, whether feelings of insignificance necessarily entail ones of indifference. In its concluding movement, this essay looks to Sextus Empiricus’s particular reading of indifference, ultimately turning also to Albert Camus’s ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, which is here understood as offering a rejoinder to the seemingly incommensurable arguments on whether the human race ultimately matters, or not.

KW - Scale

KW - indifference

KW - insignificance

KW - universe

KW - Don Paterson

KW - sub specie aeternitatis

KW - Sisyphus

U2 - 10.1080/0950236X.2017.1422795

DO - 10.1080/0950236X.2017.1422795

M3 - Journal article

VL - 33

SP - 1087

EP - 1105

JO - Textual Practice

JF - Textual Practice

SN - 0950-236X

IS - 7

ER -