Question: I'm from the Baltimore office. I want to look more at ancient Greek sculptures, and stuff, so I want to discover how they were created, and hopefully with what tools they used, and you know, so I can basically be able to re-create, and maybe use their message in my own sculpture. I want to know where to look, to find out more about the ancient Greek sculptors, to find out how they did it.

LaRouche: Well, look at this catenary function, what the catenary is. Now, last week, Bruce Director, in something he did--there were some editorial errors in the transcription of it, or something. He's put out a corrected version of it, so you should probably refer to that, on just precisely this question of the catenary. And I think it's a pedagogically excellent piece of work on his part--this one. That the catenary describes, as Leibniz understood: In the catenary, as we know it--as you can demonstrate it by the hanging chain as such--as we know it, is, with reference with what we think of as normal visual space, normal visual, sensual perceptual space, and we think of the catenary in those terms.

Now, of course, Leibniz and others looked at it in much higher terms, terms of higher orders of geometry, especially after the work of Gauss and Riemann. So, the catenary still exists, as a pedagogical concept, within simple classroom laboratory demonstrations. But, it is not, in itself, does not contain the principle; it reflects the principle, it does not contain.

Now, what the Classical Greek sculptors did was very simple, in terms of this principle: It was a matter of a slight distortion in the way in which a visible object was portrayed for purposes of sculpture. And, this distortion gave the viewer the sense, of the object sculpted, as being in mid-motion, rather than standing like a tombstone sculpture. So, this difference between the archaic, or tombstone-like sculpture, and this Classical kind of sculpture, was exactly that.

The same principle then comes up, in the 15th Century in new form. It comes up, first, in the case of Brunelleschi's solution, to the process of construction of the cupola of the Dome of, the cupola of Santa Maria de Fiore in Florence. That was a catenary principle in application. However, the same principle comes up, in a new conception of perspective, developed by Leonardo da Vinci, which shows up in such places as his Virgin of the Grotto, and other innovations. It shows up, also, in the impact of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, on Raphael Sanzio, and also on the best work of Rembrandt van Rijn.

So, this Classical business, is, you try giving a representation to the mind, which corresponds to the reality of the action being perceived, but is different than the simple sort of sense-perceptual projection, which you normally see. So, Leonardo da Vinci, instead of thinking of visual experience of seeing an object, is thinking about the relationship between the reality, of what is being portrayed, and the impression upon the mind. So, the mind now sees, not a simple photographic image; the mind sees something different than a photographic image. But, the effect of that difference, is to bring what is seen alive.

And, that's the little trick, right there. Just that simple.

So therefore, if you understand the principle of least action, you say, "What we're doing is not necessarily giving a literal description of something. But, we're thinking about the effect upon the mind, to which we're communicating, of what we're saying. Are we getting across to the mind, of that person, what we really intend, as opposed to a simple photographic image of what we said."

The same thing comes up in poetry, in the general function of irony and metaphor, in particular; and the use of musicality in utterance of language. The use of commas, in a literate form of language, unlike what you're taught in school today, by the New York Times Style-Book method, or so forth, on using commas. Because, when people don't use commas, they don't compose their thoughts in a way, which is capable of representing more serious, more profound ideas. Where as, if you want to use a statement to represent more profound ideas, than the simple "Johnny loves Jeannie" or something--if you want to say something much more complicated than that, you have to use structures of language, which are based on juxtapositions of different modes and intonations, and so forth, and different senses of subject/object relations, in the construction of the simple sentence. This requires marks of punctuation, in written material, to indicate to the reader, of the written material, what the speaker intended. And, without these marks, which distinguish this intention, and compel the mind of the reader, to shift into the different modalities implied by that kind of sentence structure, then the idea doesn't get across.

So, if somebody tries to simplify a statement, in such a way as to eliminate the ambiguities, caused by a lack of comma, where someone has said, "Let's not put a comma in there"--if they write the sentence, and then try to minimize the ambiguities of what they've said, then, they have a relatively meaningless utterance which has occurred. Hmm? But, this meaninglessness, is part of the dumbing-down process, dictated by the New York Times Style-Book; where people who believe in the New York Times Style-Book, who don't know when to use commas, who don't know how to use them, who don't know how to use marks of punctuation, who don't know how to compose a sentence according to that model, who don't know Classical music and Classical poetry--have the effect on them of being dumbed-down. And that's the same thing.

The same thing is true in art: When you try to simplify, when you try to be impressionistic in art; when you get away from the kind of problem posed by the Classical Greek sculpture, or the work of Leonardo da Vinci or Rembrandt, then, you are dumbing-down the artist, and you are artist's audience.

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