Chapter 3 - Theorizing the World

Summary

Hero’s concern for systematization within and between the texts of his corpus, his emphasis on organizing his works to facilitate their legibility and utility, and his respect for the differences between the parts of his complex disciplinary superstructure reflect a belief that the reader should be able to take his works into the world and do things with them. These “things” include building new (and possibly improved) artifacts, measuring or otherwise defining natural and artificial objects, and finding appropriate analytical regimes (mathematical, physical, mechanical, etc.) for further analyzing and describing those objects. It would not be going too far to say that Hero intends that the textual and disciplinary structures discussed in the previous chapter should help his reader learn to see the world in a new way. Just how that process is meant to work is the question that drives this chapter.