Textile matters: a transdisciplinary manifesto
Combining terms from different disciplines, this textile text reterritorializes multiple lines of thought
that in one way or another evoke tissues, threads, lineages, braids, just as the Universe’s material
weaving through spacetime is bursting with self-reference.
The narrative threads that constitute a field of knowledge can also be used to reconnect the
fragmented disciplines separated by the reductionist doctrine of the dominant scientific
epistemology. This text sews the artificial epistemic cuts imposed by the discipline boundaries,
proposing a textile approach to think about matters in between disciplines, across-through-beyond
their borders. It attempts to use language as a connector instead of abusing exclusionary jargons.
A Universal recipe
[Unravelling threads]
1 - Think of a system. Any material system.
A virus, a dance piece, a city, an electronic circuit, an ecosystem, a book, the world’s economy, a
galaxy, an oil refinery, a human body, a smartphone, a biological cell, a country’s government, an
atom. All systems are open territories in constant exchange with other systems.
2 - Contemplate the pieces that compose it without breaking it apart.
A carpet is woven from a multiplicity of threads. The reductionist gesture of decomposing a system
is like shredding a carpet to understand its pattern. But it is only when every single twist or knot
between single fibers is placed - with their specific angles, turns and tensions - that a motif can be
seen. A virus cannot be understood without its host nor without its socioeconomic impact.
3 - Observe that every piece draws a line - a fiber - as it moves, unravels in spacetime.
A triple-aspect substance: matter, energy, information.
3b - Note that the lines carry in them a direction asymmetry. The arrow of time.
Imagine every single particle would leave a trace as it traverses spacetime. We would be able to
see material threads or fiber bundles instead of points or chunks of matter. Narrative threads or
timelines would persist, telling us the stories of every particle, atom, molecule, cell, person, planet,
galaxy, carrying information from their pasts towards the future. Every encounter would correspond
to a knot - like Feynman diagrams at quantum scales. In fact, the whole Universe can be seen as
an intricate, fractal braid, twisting and tangling, branching and merging across scales.
4 - Focus on one protagonist fiber with its trajectory-line, L0.
Think in terms of geography-history, geologically. Imagine layering the approximately
two-dimensional snapshots of a city or an electronic circuit successively, at microscopically
different points in time, one on top of the next. Like a layered puff pastry of piled time-indexed
frames. If we connect the dots - every instance of the same electron or person - between these
frames, we would see fibers drawing the movement of every single entity across spacetime.
5 - Notice that the line’s trajectory is affected by the other lines it encounters along its way.
These fibers, together, weave a characteristic pattern. It consists of a characteristic braid bundled
with (Shannon) information regarding when-where-how its fibers meet and entwine themselves with
one another. By redefining the zoom - the scale of the territories considered - one can readjust
what belongs in an encounter.
6 - Ask yourself: How many lines are involved in one encounter? How do they meet: is it a twist, a
detour, a shock, a knot? Do they glue to one another, assemble, moving together? How long does
it last? How is their path changed after the encounter? Does it affect the subsequent encounters?
Proteins constitute the weft of biological self-organization. They are molecular machines moving
within, at the border and outside cells executing specific biological functions: catalyzing chemical
reactions, transporting components, transducing signals. Proteins rarely act alone. Often, they
must form a multiprotein complex to become operational. Therefore, it must be guaranteed that the
molecular machines that need to cooperate will meet and properly assemble in order to function. A
virus, also, only becomes functional after assembly. Molecular self-assembly is indispensable for
the recipes of the living.
[Causal ancestry reconstruction: a spatiotemporal, archaeological genealogy]
implex (plural implexes)
1. A genealogical coefficient of a given genealogical tree; defined as the difference
between the number of theoretical ancestors of a person and the number of their real
ones in a given generation.
Etymology
From in- (“in”) and plectere (“to weave, braid”).
Synonyms: pedigree collapse
7 - Focus on one specific point P0 on that line L0. Note that P0 lies in one specific time frame.
For example, you at the exact moment you were born. Or the first time the word “complex” was
used in English, borrowed from another language. Reconstruct its genealogy.
8 - Identify all the encounters (E1, E2, ...) in previous time frames that caused L0 to move the way
it did until it reaches P0. Highlight these encounters along L0.
Start with an individual. Check their mother and father. Repeat the process recursively for both
parents and you get a tree. A binary tree, which grows exponentially. If we go back, say,
thirty-three generations, the number of grand³³parents for each of us is 2³³ (approximately 8.58
billion) - more than today’s world population.
The problem is: back then, the total world population was definitely smaller than 2³³. And, in fact,
the more we go to the past, the bigger the number of branches in our trees and the smaller the
world population. So, the problem gets even harder to explain and a question begs to be answered:
If the world’s entire population was smaller than the set of your ancestors, where did you come
from? How can we explain this apparent paradox? Have you ever tried to figure out the maths
behind that?
9 - For every highlighted encounter En, list all the lines involved in that encounter.
Words also partially carry their ancestries along with them - as ideas do. Surviving remnants of the
past. A citation is a line to be followed upstream, towards the past, pointing to a certain region of
the intellectual fabric’s geography-history. A text is, therefore, woven from its ancestors. The
structure of citation networks is a good image to keep in mind: a directed acyclic graph. And, by
reachability, a partial order.
9b - For every line involved in En, repeat steps 7-9 recursively, with En as the focal point of that line.
Note that the causal architecture of P0 branches like a tree going backwards in time.
So, where did you come from? To understand the solution to the apparent genealogical paradox,
imagine a hypothetical person H has had more than one child and that two of H’s children have
also become your direct ancestors through different lineages. In other words, H is your ancestor
twice, a “double ancestor”. A trace of inbreeding. So, if we draw a “classical” (binary) genealogical
tree upside down - it’s about time! Why are the roots still pointing to the skies? -, H will appear
twice in your roots. A duplicate.
Not just that, but H’s entire roots will appear twice in your roots too, at two different places. So, if H
has a “triple” ancestor K, this person K will appear three times twice along your roots (i.e. six
times). Roots multiply, a “house of mirrors” effect. Digging deeper, the number of repetitions grows
exponentially, explaining where all those extra people came from. Repetitions, multiplied. Look up
Cleopatra’s genealogy as an example.
10 - Contemplate the tree merging back into itself, like veins. For most ancestor-encounters, there
are multiple paths connecting them to P0. So, P0 owes its existence to the entire collection of
ancestor-encounters, whose existences were transmitted as a causal flow through the veins visited
by iterating steps 7-9.
To eliminate all repetitions, everytime a tree duplicate is detected it should be folded and glued to
its copy, merging all copies together. As a consequence, loops are produced - not directed
cycles (that would represent forbidden causal loops), but something like islands in a flowing
causal river. It destroys the property that topologically defines trees: trees cannot have loops of any
kind. But the repetition elimination also reduces the diameter of the genealogy considerably,
limiting it to the actual population size as time elapses, solving the apparent paradox. Genealogies
are not trees, they are veins. Our roots’ diameters do not grow exponentially, they are always
limited by the total population size at different points in history.
There is more to it than meets the eye: bottlenecks abound going backwards, drastic reductions in
the diameters of our roots. Check Maynard Smith’s and Szathmáry’s Major Transitions in Evolution.
The mitochondrial Eve or the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Seeds producing big-bangs.
Some of these revolutionary seeds emerge precisely because of the merging of branches.
Chloroplasts and mitochondria probably originated through symbiogenesis - merging branches.
Sexual reproduction is an intrinsic branch merger. A virus can transpose genetic excerpts between
species, affecting their evolution. Horizontal gene transfers. Ecological interactions consist of
extensive matter-energy-information exchanges, tangles between species, braiding co-evolutionary
branches together. Biological evolution is not a tree. Language evolution is also not a tree.
Why isn’t English considered a creole language with its mixed germanic, greek, celtic, latin roots?
Colonization and lexical borrowing operate as horizontal transfers, branches merging, partly
erasing cultures, eliminating some of their traces. This mechanism also allows decoupling
languages from ethnicities, cultural from biological evolution.
11 - From now on, think of any point P on a line as stretching from its veiny ancestry.
By changing the course of history, poisoned apples and train delays have certainly been
somebody’s ancestor, much like grandnparents. Genealogy becomes a real tangle, re-injected back
into itself, interwoven. Genealogical veins. Like git version control, branching and merging.
11b - The same causal reconstruction [steps 7-10] going upstream towards the past can be applied
downstream to the future. The unfolding consequences of any point P percolates like a river that
repeatedly branches and merges into itself through a rugged potential landscape. Like cosmic rays
entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
You should watch a video of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum if you haven’t yet.
11c - Combine P0 + its veins upstream + its veins downstream: a heart and its lineage.
The material equivalent of the light cone representing the causal structure of Einstein’s spacetime:
every point is the heart of its own lineage, pumping the causal flow forward.
11d - Interlace all neighboring lineages, unveiling a multitude of hearts with common ancestries.
The Þjórsá river in Iceland or the whole water cycle are good examples. Money flow is another.
We, humans, share most of our ancestries. The consequences of our actions overlap, also.
12 - Let these ideas rest.
[Composing, weaving, computing]
Enter now the electronic circuit inside a smartphone. The ways cables, wires, and hardware
elements connect considerably resemble links between streets within and between cities.
Bifurcations. Traffic. Crossroad tangles and road interchanges. When circuits execute a program,
bulky rivers of electron-cars flow through the wires. They ride along these tracks towards higher
electric potential destinations, branching and merging with other streams. Transistors act like traffic
lights, defining when the electrons are allowed to flow or when they must wait for a green signal.
From now on, think of the execution of a program as weaving electron braids. A form of
tapestry.
13 - Connect the loom to a power supply.
Most transactions require energy. An electronic circuit is connected to a power supply and
ground. The thermodynamics of molecular biology is based on the potential difference supplied by
energy providers such as ATP molecules. A matter-energy-information throughput to sustain
Prigogine’s dissipative structures far from equilibrium. A universal basic income.
13b - Pull a few threads of your interest. Remember they carry their ancestries.
Let me reclaim the textile character of a text, beyond etymology. If you follow my zigzagging lines
of thought, you will notice how they entwine, forming a tissue. Multiple lines coming from diverse
lineages of thought, branches of different fields, contexts. Pulling threads from field-places,
progressively forming a new piece of fabric. Space-filling curves.
14 - Combine, braid, weave them in a specific pattern. Write down a recipe for later replication.
Context is the ensemble of threads that, assembled in a specific way, form a fabric.
It is not just a coincidence that the origin of computers is tied to looms. Every braid can be
associated with a particular calculus or computation. Just as we follow lines of thoughts,
computers often process information in “threads”. Ada Lovelace probably noticed that weaving
could be abstracted and performed in all sorts of symbols - after all, similar operations are also
used to manipulate numbers, images, sounds or words. Alan Turing figured out the requirements a
system would need to fulfill in order to flexibly perform any kind of computation. A universal
computer. This conceptual device - the universal Turing machine - is composed of:
I. [encoded instructions] a tape containing a sequence of symbols (e.g. 0/1 or A/U/C/G)
II. [adapters] a table of correspondences, indicating how to translate the tape
III. [weaver] a head (with an internal state) that executes the tape’s instructions
The resemblance between a Turing machine and the biological translation machinery is striking.
Both operate like a Jacquard loom that converts the binary code of the punched cards into a
particular tapestry motif. A music score into sound. A code-pattern correspondence ubiquitous in
different forms of computing.
14b - For more complexity, compose existing braids to form new braids. Fractal territories. Pay
special attention to how these braids fit together, interlock. Repeat this step as long as more
emergence of complexity is desired.
Your eyes are reading this sentence. Exactly like a pinhole camera, the image you’re seeing now is
projected upon your retina - upside down. The photons, hitting different pixels of the retina, trigger
electric currents sent through a bundle of optic nerve fibers. The signal will, then, undergo
multiple processing layers - braiding inside your visual cortex, really - until it finally activates the
regions of your brain that recognize the patterns you are seeing. Like deep learning, like
evolution. A virtual fabric of associations that not only resemble the architecture of the real tissue
they are inscribed on, but needs it to be woven. Complex ideas and memories in our minds are
braided from their basic ingredients. Grouped together, merged, combined, like a Hasse diagram
of an abstract simplicial complex.
And a human body, can a reductionist break it apart? Pulling out a single thread (e.g. point
mutation) may remove essential relations. Ontological emergence, agency and downward
causation require acknowledging finitary relations between parts. Transcend the network
representations of binary-only relations! What about the ternary and quaternary and...? Think in
terms of a simplex. Or a hypergraph. An assemblage becomes an individual, indivisible. Atom
for many possible materialisms.
15 - Observe the resulting fabric. When the threads meet, assemble, how do they look? Do they
operate? Do they operate on you or on someone/something else? How?
Biological computing is multi-threaded, wet and asynchronous. Still, a form of tapestry. Choosing a
government has a great deal of influence on the social fabric.
16 - Repeat steps 13-15 differently.
Poetic language and fiction materialize: ideas woven together become the foundation for the next
generations of ideas to come. We can weave a different reality.
[Origin of subject, origin of life, origin of mind: agency, self-replication and self-awareness]
When assemblages themselves become autonomous assemblers, they acquire some degree of
independence. Agency. They actively and carefully distinguish, choose and pick from multiple
threads that enter their territories, weaving according to their own protocols. Output becomes input.
17 - Draw attention to the assemblages produced in steps 13-16 that were also assemblers
themselves. Reserve the self-replicating automata - weavers that weave weavers.
Aren’t memories in our minds autonomously weaving new memories? Memes, jumping between
people’s minds, self-replicate.
18 - Let them evolve until they start collaborating, inventing recipes for group coordination. Observe
the transition to multicellularity, the emergence of new levels of complexity.
As you read my text, a giant tangle is formed between your body, your surroundings and my
thoughts. We become tangled. My thoughts expressed here will connect to ideas you have formed
by reading other authors. Our thoughts, besides being electronic braids within our brains, are part
of a bigger collective braid. We materialize a knot between everything we read.
