Why There Is Still No Such Thing as the World (Blottisham Tries Again)

Dramatis Personae

• Professor Quillibrace — dry, unflappable, subtly devastating

• Mr Blottisham — still confident, increasingly flustered, loves a “surely”

• Miss Elowen Stray — observant, reflective, noting the cracks

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Blottisham (leaning forward, hopeful):

Very well. Perhaps it was “world” that misled us. Let us call it the universe. Surely that must exist in total?

Quillibrace (arches an eyebrow):

Ah yes. The universe. Same trouble, slightly larger.

Blottisham:

But physics talks of the universe as a whole! Space, time, energy — it is all there!

Quillibrace:

It is all instantiated under constraints, Mr Blottisham. The “universe” is a cut, not a container.

Blottisham (flustered):

A cut? You mean, like a slice of cake?

Elowen Stray (patiently):

Not a slice, Mr Blottisham. A cut selects distinctions — it makes phenomena intelligible. The cake is not waiting complete in the cupboard.

Blottisham (grumbling):

So physics doesn’t capture the universe; it captures… cuts of the universe?

Quillibrace:

Precisely. And no cut is privileged. There is no final slice.

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Blottisham (desperate):

Then what about reality itself? Surely that cannot depend on perspective!

Quillibrace:

Reality requires perspective to be intelligible. Ask any quantum system. Ask any relativistic frame.

Blottisham:

But the totality…

Quillibrace:

Is a linguistic convenience pretending to be ontology. Like calling a forest “the forest” and imagining it exists independently of the paths you walk.

Elowen Stray:

Every attempt to name it “total” erases the differences that make phenomena possible in the first place.

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Blottisham (slams his hands lightly):

This seems to leave nothing fixed at all!

Quillibrace:

On the contrary. The only fixed thing is the discipline of distinction itself. Cuts, systems, and phenomena — these are real. Totality is not.

Blottisham:

I still do not feel satisfied. Surely…

Quillibrace (interrupting softly, with finality):

“Surely” is your problem.

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Elowen Stray (smiling faintly):

So we abandon the universe as an object, and adopt… what?

Quillibrace:

We adopt perspective. Instantiation. Phenomenon. Meaning. And second-order symbolic systems to stabilise it.

Blottisham:

I feel… dizzy.

Quillibrace:

Excellent. That is the intended effect.

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Elowen Stray:

Perhaps the world is best described as what we cannot say in total, rather than what we can name.

Quillibrace:

Yes. And every insistence on totality is the very act that ensures nothing remains.

Blottisham (quietly, to himself):

I suppose… I could have called it “tea”.

Quillibrace (nodding, approvingly):

Tea is sufficiently perspectival. It survives all cuts.

Curtain.