Visualization of Realmatics

[Krelian]

At the suggestion of Kurkistan, reposting this as a new topic. 

 

My original post;

 

Kurkistan, on 13 Mar 2013 - 16:06, said:

Huh. Physics. 

Thing is, everything might be composed of swirly loops of stuff fundamentally, but the basic unit of magical interaction in the Cosmere seems to be most usually "objects" as whole objects. Awakening, Soulcasting (usually), Basic Lashings, unskilled Iron/Steel Allomancy, etc. When a Seon forms a Spiritual Connection with you, or you form a connection with someone's soul, it's connecting with you, not some aggregate of your parts. So maybe everything is loopy pathways at the bottom of it, but connections seem to require some particularly concrete and whole set loopy pathways at each end.

Ok, from a science point of view, this is going to be a hideous mess of mixed analogies, but hopefully it makes sense as a visual analogy (inspired by the physics comments) and fits this theory fairly well;

Imagine taking a whole bunch of little bits of string and tying them together in various ways to make a gigantic snarled ball of string. This ball of string is floating in space, and is considered a solid object. (There's your string theory   )

Think of the knots in the ball of string as the nodes we've been talking about for the Spiritweb, while the bits between knots are the connections.

Now place a piece of paper under the string, and shine a light on it from above. The light (more precisely, everything about it - angle, intensity, duration, etc.) is the cognitive aspect. (Look up the Holographic Principle if you want the physics side of that part as I'm really envisioning it. And probably a headache).

The shadow cast on the piece of paper is the object's existence in the physical realm. Pretend for the moment that our concept of "shadow" allows for actions upon the shadow to have some effect on the object casting it. As I said, the analogy is meant for a visual connection between everything only.

You can change the shadow both by manipulating the string while still keeping it a solid object (manipulation of the spiritual), and also by changing the aspects of the light (manipulating the cognitive). Various mixtures of the two are your normal forms of Investiture. It's possible to treat the ball of string as a collection of little bits of string, but for most basic manipulations, it's a single object.

And, in special cases, you can punch through knots and physically remove/graft on different snarls of string. Voila, Hemalurgy!

Oh, and sDNA is the instructions for making the ball of string in the first place. 

Edit: And Forms, I think, in this analogy, would be best thought of as sets of combinations of string and light that are similar, and cast similar shadows. For example, every combination that gives a stained glass window of the proper size and shape in Shai's cell. The lack of absolute specificity is what allows Forgery to work at all without needing to describe every single little bit of string and every photon of light. 

 

The original intent was to provide a workable, visualizable model of Realmatics. The above post was inspired by a topic (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/3033-nature-of-forms-forgery) which involved various allusions to physics and math, which led to this analogy. 

 

For those who are versed in topology/physics, I think (hope) this probably makes some sort of sense. 

 

But, I'd love to get input on a visual model that reflects what we know so far that is easily accessible to all, as a means of discussing this stuff. 

 

I'm not trying to discuss the minutiae of the theoretical details of Realmatics here, just trying to create visual analogies that are consistent with text and Word of Brandon thus far, and let people talk about how they envision things in their mind.

 

Thoughts?

[FlashWrogan]

I'm really out of it at this point, but I loved it the first time you posted it. It made a lot of sense as far as an analogy goes. I'll probably pop back in this evening and give a more meaty response.