[Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 126, Issue 4

Mon Oct 27 05:47:25 CET 2025

Dear Kate,
It is sad that Karl has left. My experience has been that I understood a bit more each time I heard him.
The basic themes he was working with were number in relation to order (Sumerian) and pattern or grouping (Arkadian).
For seeing how number is fundamental in our descriptions of the world these two ways of holding number are very important.
We can explore Karl’s themes by starting with and illustrating for ourselves how these themes work. For example, consider the drawing below.
I have illustrated a 5 x 5 square. So I have illustrated the number 25 as a special grouping of 25 dots in the form of a square.
And in examining this grouping you see that it, in an ordered way, divides into 25 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9, a sum of consecutive odd numbers.
In this way the square grouping is related to an ordered sequence and we see from this that ANY square number is a sum of consecutive odd numbers.
We see this because the grouping shows us how this order occurs for any grouping of this form. This is just one small example of the intimate relationship of the Arkadian and the Sumerian points of view. 

We can work with these themes by starting with the ideas and making our own illustrations. Then, if we wish, we can look at Karl’s more technical writing. His particular examples are, in fact, examples not so far from these, but constructed in his own viewpoint, which is quite original. He is concerned particularly with a kind of crossover in the handling of number between grouping and order, and with a finite range that, for him, appears significant in that it allows for fluidity in this translation. We handle numbers of sizes above and below his optimal range. But I think that in order to do that we are in fact ‘forced’ to use signs and symbols. Our need to be able have this fluidity pushes us into language as reference to pushes us into the situation where language operates on and we think through and about language itself. There is much more to say here.

The matter of the NAND gate or the NOR gate seems to me to be closer to our considerations with Spencer-Brown, where the ‘mark’ is a generalization of a NOR gate (for Spencer-Brown) and equivalently a NAND gate (for Charles Sanders Peirce). We have <ABC> = Not(A or B or C) for example.
And indeed the theme of order and grouping comes in here in a very fundamental way because it is only the group of values A,B,C and not their  order that is important to the mark as operator. The mark as operator acts on groups without order. And order arises from the acts of operation. When we identify with the mark ("the mark and the observer are identical in the form”) we are identifying with our Arkadian/Sumerian role as intermediators of 
Order and Pattern.
There is more to say here and we can return to it.
Very best,
Lou

> On Oct 26, 2025, at 12:23 PM, Katherine Peil <ktpeil at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear friends,
> I am shocked and saddened to hear that we have lost the wonderful Karl. May we honor him by understanding and applying what he has given us. I had hoped for more in-depth communication and interaction to get there myself, but if his job here is done, the ball is in our court. Feel free to contact me with any insights you may have gained that can illuminate the “computational” paradigm. To my mind, he was describing something akin to the NAND logic gate, and it was a quite profound missing piece.
> With reverent gratitude and a bit of heartbreak,
> Kate Kauffman
> 
> 
> On 10/26/25, 5:00 AM, "Fis" <fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es>> wrote: Katherine Peil Kauffman
> 
> Send Fis mailing list submissions to
>         fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
> 
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. Re: Karl Javorszky passed away yesterday (Francesco Rizzo)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2025 06:49:06 +0100
> From: Francesco Rizzo <13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com <mailto:13francesco.rizzo at gmail.com>>
> To: Pedro C. Mariju?n <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com <mailto:pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com>>
> Cc: fis at listas.unizar.es <mailto:fis at listas.unizar.es>
> Subject: Re: [Fis] Karl Javorszky passed away yesterday
> Message-ID:
>         <CAEvKwyTjKf0sS20q+t3aWWFmj1wEsk-nBCo-8fv+dGTgJax5Yg at mail.gmail.com <mailto:CAEvKwyTjKf0sS20q+t3aWWFmj1wEsk-nBCo-8fv+dGTgJax5Yg at mail.gmail.com>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Dear Pedro and all
> I too join in the embrace, using an economy whose capital is prayer:
> Lord, mercy,
> forgiveness and mercy, may your will be done.
> 
> Francis
> 
> 
> > Dear FIS Colleagues,
> >
> > Thanks, Krassimir. It is very sad news indeed. Karl was a very dear
> > acquaintance of mine.
> > He came to visit me in Zaragoza as early as in 1994. We had invited him to
> > deliver a Seminar on his new approach to biology via his original number
> > theory.
> > Afterwards we cooperated a couple of years within a small group (Jose
> > Pastor & Morris Villarroel) in the development of his multidimensional
> > partitions stuff--a fascinating topic which unfortunately we could not
> > continue and has remained out from focus.  He presented further
> > elaborations in successive FIS Conferences and mostly in our discussion
> > list where we all have read and enjoyed his curious and eloquent prose.
> > Karl was a charming man, discrete, polite and perhaps rather elusive
> > --except concerning his loved Sumerian / Akkadian counting systems and the
> > way Nature computes her cyclicity.
> > Quite probably what Karl would have preferred is an obituary commenting on
> > his work... Annette has suggested me that the people who has had a more
> > direct connection with him prepare a short report on that.
> > It is a very good idea.
> >
> > Dear Karl, a strong hug!
> > --Pedro
> >
> >
> > El 25/10/2025 a las 15:13, Krassimir Markov escribi?:
> >
> > Dear FIS Colleagues,
> > It is with great sadness that I inform you that one of the most active
> > members of the FIS community, Karl Javorszky, passed away yesterday.
> > Sympathy and condolences to his relatives, friends and loved ones.
> > A very original thinker has passed away, who drew attention to patterns
> > that have escaped our attention.
> > Rest in peace, Karl!
> > With respect,
> > Krassimir
> 
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