[ IP ] Drawing


 Neurath ’ s Boat is a simile comparing a body of knowledge to a ship forever at sea- the ship need maintenance, it needs repairs, it needs old features removed and new features built on, but the ship will never be in a dry dock from which its inhabitants can get off, step back and see the whole thing as one piece, as it really is. Because there is no dry dock. There is no land. If you take a life boat and attempt to row away from the ship, far enough to see the entire thing at once, the ship is so massive that before you are there, you will have exhausted the strength to get back. You will be lost. 
 
 
 The simile of Neurath ’ s Boat has been applied at least to science, to philosophy, to logic and to consciousness, which are fitting considering Neurath. It is in turn based on the Ship of Theseus, a paradox asking whether a boat that has had all its components replaced, maybe more than once, is still the same boat. 
 
 
 I read about Neurath ’ s Boat at a time I was thinking a lot about the nature of “ self ” and “ identity, ” part of a personal project that had coalesced as something different and then turned into that. I then found out somebody beat me to applying the simile to identity by about 20 years. Oh well. 
 
 
 I look at “ self ” and “ identity ” as things we create and build, not things we find or uncover, and confusion between the two camps as arising from the fact that we all start creating these things before we know how to hold a pencil. Before we know what pencil is. And there were other people chipping in, one way or another, so a lot of the early work was done without us knowing, without them realizing it, and if that ’ s just where you stop, there ’ s not a whole lot anyone else can do. 
 
 
 The young woman in the picture is holding a pencil and drawing herself in grayscale. She ’ s pretty good too, about as good as you ’ d expect someone to be at about 20, if they ’ d put some serious effort into learning to draw, practicing drawing, and making a lot of sketches that weren ’ t so good or just ultimately weren ’ t up to her standards. 
 
 
 When she first started drafting herself, she wouldn ’ t have had the fine motor control to use a pencil. She would have used finger paint and her self portrait would have looked exactly like every three year old ’ s art you have ever seen. Likewise, she ’ ll probably continue to improve herself- do you see how her hands and forearms are large relative to her face? It ’ s not just how she ’ s built, although in a way it kind of is. It ’ s an attempt to show perspective, to acknowledge a third dimension in something that physically only exists in two. It ’ s not quite there yet, but that ’ s OK. She ’ s figured out that it ’ s a thing, and she ’ s already come this far. 
 
 
 So how did she know to draw this, and not some other thing? It ’ s not like she really “ exists, ” right? Right. And my hunch is that she didn ’ t, because how could she? But she started making something and this was a something that worked. There could be many somethings but it ’ s not like she can compare them and choose the best, because for one thing these potentials exist even less than she does. For another, that would entail her getting the 2D ship to a 3D dry dock, which she can ’ t. But she has an idea of this, and she ’ s prodding it a little, trying to incorporate a perspective that ’ s bigger than herself into the hazy limitations of her own existence. Considering what there is beyond what she can know. Demonstrating something only a viewer from outside really comprehends.
