Introduction

Welcome travelers

Hello there,

Sky here from soirée with sky, a blog where I share tidbits of my traveling experiences and bribe you into reading them with recipes from all over the world. When I first made a substack account, it was all fun and games. And it still is. But now here I am fighting the urge to create ten pages for each of my weird interests that go beyond travel and food. So, this is my attempt at honing in on a fusion of some of my most all-consuming: the intersection of science, philosophy, and language.

I’ve settled¹ on calling this Transmutations, the term used scientifically to describe the nuclear transformation of one chemical element into another chemical element. It also means more generally the process of changing something completely, especially into something different.² What’s interesting about this definition is that it calls into question what something different means, both empirically and metaphysically. But without getting too into the ship of Theseus, I’ll move on to the point of why I love this word.

If you’re familiar with Semiotics, this definition of transmutation strikes at the heart of the function of language and how we as humans use it. To oversimplify, we use language as a referential and as a differentiation between other things, as in not just to name things.

There is an excellent short story by Jorge Luis Borges called Artifices (1944)³ which conveys this idea perfectly. One of the characters is described as having the superpower of being completely, profoundly immersed in present reality, and is therefore imbued with flawless sense perception. While at first this seems to be a gift (eidetic memory, can observe events with hyper-awareness, can recall the minutiae of details of an entire day), the intense nature of his existence is slowly realized, especially in terms of language. How would one express themselves or understand the world around them if their reality was so sharply understood and processed? Well as it turns out, when one lives completely immersed in the present, one cannot recognize systems or contexts, cannot make generalizations. He needs individual words for everything. So intense is his condition that he even needs separate words to distinguish a dog that he saw from the side view at 3:14pm with the same dog from the front view at 3:15pm. To him, these are two separate things entirely, and he cannot conceive of the fact that it is the same dog, just from a different point of view one minute later. You’ve probably already begun to see how a couple paradoxes arise here, but once again I have to keep the train moving so as to get to the point.

Borges’ story puts into extreme relief what Saussure is saying about Semiotics, specifically in the difference between langue and parole: that humans use the abstract structure of languages in contexts to make generalizations in order to function in the world. We need to be able to say that we saw the same dog but from different angles, lest we toil to create individual words for every individual instance. We need to transmute the abstract entirety of a language into everyday use, into the appropriate individual moments. The word and idea of transmutation itself, to me, makes this point. And to stretch the definition further, to transmute can mean to make applicable the abstract, another theme of this here page. I want to take these foofoo philosophical concepts and apply them to the haps of my own life and ventures, particularly with translation, which I’ll talk about more below.

As I’ve hopefully pointed out, the word transmutation is used in both science and language, two of the three subjects I listed as being the focus of this page. But what about philosophy? Well as I’ve also hopefully pointed out, one thing changing into another thing, and how we go about making a definitive statement like that, raises an entire tsunami wave of philosophical questions (queue the Cartesians, phenomenologists, and the psychos in Baudrillard’s cult!!!). So, by way of defining what transmutations means to me, I hope I’ve given you dear reader some insight as to what this page will entail (and also probably highlight to you my constant battle with Getting To The Point). Definitions aside though, I won’t lie, this is probably just going to be a written manifestation of my weird brain soup.

Now I’d like to share some background as to how the hell I even came up with the idea to write this. I work full time, often close to 40 hours a week at a service job. Coffee to be exact. Okay yes, I’m a barista. Whatever. But it ended up being a bit more taxing than I’d anticipated when I first signed, thinking it would be limited to making, you know, coffee, and then maybe reading a cheeky book in my downtime. Oh but I was wrong, working at this humble little mom n’ pop shop requires just a handful of employees to pull some weight. That is not to say though that this is a particularly hard job. It’s not. It’s just that there’s a lot to do every shift and my shifts make up the majority of my day. Okay, getting to the point. Since I work full time, I naturally look forward to my days off, and when I do get a day to myself, I try to really really use it.

Compounded on top of this, I’m a fresh grad who kinda feels like my intellectual journey was cut short (and I’m too broke to go to grad school rn). I was given all the critical thinking and analysis skills that come with higher education, but I was never really able to pursue my own intellectual interests to the extent that I wanted. Particularly in the fields of science and philosophy. So, when I do get precious little pockets of time when I’m not slingin’ espresso and milk, I go in on the philosophy. Another perk of having attended and paid heavily for higher education: access to the library database. Meaning that for (sort of) free, I can read pretty much any book, essay, dissertation, you name it that my institution has access to. Which is a lot. My first venture post-grad was into Daoism,⁴ a religion that fascinates me because it seems to rise out of the noise of the other major religions and speak to me. Sounds cheesy but hey, what calls, calls. And it has only spiraled from there. Along with the database, I also watch lectures on YouTube and subscribe to creators like Let’s Talk Religion, The Living Philosophy (who has a substack!), and Oases of Wisdom, to name a few. I also, of course, use Substack, and love reading Superb Owl, Orbis Tertius, and other writers who beautifully blend science, philosophy, and the personal. As you will see from this page, I am very inspired by these guys.

In sum, I want to add my own personal flavor and interpretations to lofty philosophical ideas, share some cool linguistic stuff, and attempt to wrangle in scientific concepts (I did get a C in chemistry, yes). I would also go so far as to give myself the title of Amateur Translator. One of my majors in university was French with a heavy emphasis on politics and translation. So, for fun (don’t judge), I like to translate French songs and short texts from writers I admire. Hopefully I will overcome my stage fright and this can be a space for some of my work to see the light of day. Presently, I’m working on the first article, which will feature some of the problems I faced translating Felwine Sarr. And in an effort to personalize these articles, I’ll be linking my own journey with the underrated art of translation to scientific and philosophical subjects. As we’ll see, there are many more dots to be connected than may appear on the surface!

See you soon for my first article that still needs a looooot of work lol.

(Thinking of addressing you lucky subscribers as Mutants? Will probably go forward with this whether you like it or not:))

Cheers,

Sky

1. Other options included Locus Ceruleus, Stellar Locusynthesis, and—and I’m embarrassed to share it—Philposcipo (supposed to be a fun combo of the words philosophy, poetry, and political science lmao).

2. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/transmutation

3. This article goes in-depth and highlights the various paradoxes in Borges’ story, and talks about the unlikely linkage to Werner Heisenberg. We’ll be seeing a lot more of these two shortly…

4. Some good introductory texts are Daoism and Chinese culture by Livia Kohn and An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies by Steve Coutinho if you’re interested too!